Questioning the Aids consensus

Ray Burston

As with the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of Stephen Gately, sadly I suspect most media types won't fondle it with a barge pole.

Andy Lewis

I think the Spectator is being very badly misled here. The film appears to be not just wrong but seriously misleading.

Your clip features Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier. His latest research is quite bizarre and appears to be resurrecting the descredited homeopathic work of fellow Frenchman Jacques Benveniste. Details here: http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/10/why-i-am-nominating-luc-montagnier-for.html

Tom

What he says should not be suppressed, but the public are not normally well placed to understand a scientific debate as nuanced as this one.

Being healthy may give someone who contracts HIV the chance to beat it, or to enjoy a longer latent period of infection, but in the end most will still develop a chronic HIV infection, progressing to AIDS if untreated. There is no doubt that AIDS is caused by HIV and people in the 1st world are perfectly capable of catching HIV - the first noted cases were in L.A.

It is of course fair to ask whether the funding HIV research gets is balanced, or whether prevention strategies are right - but the comments of no one scientist should be misinterpreted to mean that the search for better treatment is futile.

Rhoda Klapp

Here's my list of things that can't be openly discussed..

DavidDP

Wow Fraser. This is a whole new leap from the MMR vacine rubbish. Right up to Thabo Mbeki territory.

I'm quite stunned, and not a little disturbed, frankly.

MartSharm

The Spectator is going weird. Why are you having any association with AIDS denialism and associated bad science? The film has been denounced by the doctors who appeared in it: they repudiate the content of the film and allege they were decieved by the director.

I fear the Spectator's BS filter is missing in action, and I am seriously beginning to doubt the value of my subscription. Get a grip, Fraser.

Richard Wilson

You're a brave man in putting out this debate call, Fraser. Prepare to meet the entire 'AIDS denialist' online community. If Sadun Kal and David Crowe show up then you'll be in for a real treat.

On your decision to hold the House of Numbers event I won't repeat what I've already written elsewhere (http://tr.im/CFgm) - but I will say that if you seriously want to debate AIDS then this online discussion is likely to be a much more productive forum. I look forward to hearing what you make of the people who'll be showing up in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Doug

Fraser shows time and again his scientific ignorance. It's patently clear that chronic HIV infection leads to AIDS. So it's irresponsible to suggest that the link between HIV and AIDS is somehow weak. Not even Montagnier suggests that.

It's perfectly true that not everyone who has a communicable contact with an HIV carrier will develop a chronic HIV infection. Just look at the number of near miss accidents in the medical profession many of whose non-infection is due to blind luck but some also escape because their immune system beats it early on. And it's obvious when you consider the many people who come into close contact with highly contagious flu sufferers but don't become symptomatic. The immune system can fight off many infections but it isn't guaranteed as your immune system is never 100% all the time and that their are also many different mutations within a broad virus heading including different types of HIV.

There are even a few rare people known to medical science who appear to be immune to the HIV virus.

I think Montagnier is theoretically right when he says a 100% healthy person could fight off early HIV infection. But practically it is irrelevant because you can't be 100% healthy all the time. Being healthy isn't a binary condition it constantly fluctuates.

As for curing a chronic HIV sufferer, there simply isn't any evidence to support that suggestion. All you have to do is look at the HIV positive millionaires who eat well, exercise well, take supplements and can devote plenty of time to being as healthy as possible but they still die (after lives prolonged by modern medicines).

Victor Southern

Good God! The witch doctors are arriving.

Dean

This is a very old debate which dates back to the writings of Peter Duesberg in the 1980s. There is some evidence, albeit hotly disputed, that the number of deaths attributed to AIDS in Africa has been over-stated because severe immune deficiency can result from other causes, notably malnutrition. Some of thse deaths may have been wrongly attributed to the impact of the HIV virus.

However, there is absolutely no doubt that nearly all so-called AIDS cases in developed countries can be traced to the single causative factor of infection by the HIV virus. Furthermore, HIV infection almost invariably leads eventually to AIDS-related illnesses, except in those who have exceptionally strong immune systems and/or respond well to drug treatment.

There is an unstated 'conservative' agenda which still seeks to link AIDS to the lifestyle practices of certain high risk groups - which is presumably why articles that seek to challenge the link between AIDS and HIV tend to attract the attention of gullible journalists on magazines like the Spectator.

I'm not saying it's wrong to publicise these views. They fly against the scientific consensus but, hey, scientists have been wrong before. However, you do need to be aware that, by giving publicity to those who seek to deny the link between HIV and AIDS, you run the risk of de-sensitising people to the risks of HIV infection. Since it ceased to be perceived as a 'death sentence' in the early 1990s, there has been a dramatic increase in high risk behaviour.
Anything that leads people to think they can contract HIV without experiencing serious consequences risks exacerbating this trend.

Ryan

HIV causes AIDS? Scientific fact? Then can they not even test you for HIV? Why are they only able to test you for HIV anti-bodies? Why do some people test negative, then positive, then negative, then positive? Why do they drugs they prescribe, the cocktails, act in the same manner as HIV is supposed to (destroying the immune system)? Why in the U.S. is it STILL 90% men while in Africa it is 50/50? Why do the same groups of people who die and contract diseases from HIV/AIDS, die from the same diseases without HIV/AIDS? Why are you people incapable of doing any actual research and asking real questions, instead of blindly accepting what is fed to you?

Peter From Maidstone

Why would you question the undoubted link between lifestyle, social practices and infection? How is this a 'conservative agenda'?

If I inject heroin and share needles I am highly likely to end up with a load of diseases, one of which may well be HIV/AIDS. If I engage in unprotected promiscuous sex I am also highly likely to end up with a variety of diseases, one of which may well be HIV/AIDS, and this is even more so if I engage in unprotected promiscuous homosexual practices.

In parts of Africa there is a great deal of pressure in some places for teenagers to engage in sexual activity and this also increases the risk of infection. In other places men think they can have as many women as they like, without protection, and then insist on their wives making themselves available for unprotected sex as well, which is the cause of many monogamous mothers becoming infected.

How is this a 'conservative agenda', unless the 'approved agenda' is one which seeks to promote infection by remaining silent on the causes of infection.

BTW two of my best friends became infected through Haemophilia drugs. Thankfully they remain healthy after 30 years of infection, and have both fathered non-infected children by their equally loving wives. I am well aware of the burden this dreadful disease is, and I do not think anyone 'deserves' it. But there are practices and lifestyles which lay a person open to grave risks, and to highlight those is not 'conservative', it is 'compassionate'.

Nicholas

What is AIDS-denialism - apart from a very clumsy conjoining of an abbreviation and a suspect word?

Cameron

looks like big pharma is commenting vigorously :)

Fergus Pickering

Well, Fraser, you seem to have made a lot of people VERY CROSS INDEED. I'm sure it's good for them. I have no opinion whatever on AIDS or HIV. You get AIDS if you have lots of sex with lots of people particularly gay sex. Is that right? I don't know anything about it and am happy to continue in that happy state of ignorance. But I do enjoy it when people get VERY CROSs INDEED. So keep it up, feller.

Dean

The point is not that there is no link between lifestyle and the risk of HIV infection. Of course there is. But Duesberg went one step further: he tried to argue that people can contract AIDS simply by going to gay bars and taking 'poppers'. That is to say, he argued that the immune deficiency was directly caused by the lifestyle, rather than the virus. This is the argument that some religious conservatives in the USA have tried to exploit.

But this argument has been proven false by the medical evidence. People only get AIDS if they are infected with the HIV virus. But clearly if they live a lifestyle that increases the risk of them coming into contact with the virus, then they bear the responsibility for that.

No-one is trying to deny that certain lifestyle practices, like sexual promiscuity and using needles to inject drugs, massively increases the risk of HIV infection. The point rather is that the HIV virus has to be present for AIDS to develop. To deny that is akin to denying Darwinism i.e. it contradicts the scientific evidence.

obmode

the hiv test is cross-reactive with drug use and flu shots, only identifying 2, 3 or 4 proteins for a positive result depending on which country one is testing in. the whole situation with AIDS is tragic. let us all continue to pray for all those who have been misdiagnosed with hiv and AIDS. get informed now at www.twitter.com/hivquestions

Vincent

If HIV is so well known, why is the clinical definition of being HIV-positive different from country to country? Why don't the tests test for HIV itself instead of antibodies? Why do healthy HIV-positives fall ill when taking anti-HIV drugs, and regain health when they drop the drugs? Why has the HIV lobby always been wrong, always overstated the size of the "epidemics"? Why, after 25 years of research and billions of dollars have they never found a vaccine?
It's good to ask tough questions from time to time, and take one's head out of the sand.

Arthur

The link between HIV and AIDS is indisputable according to the scientific evidence. AIDS denialism has also contributed to the deaths of over 300,000 people in South Africa alone.

Meanwhile, the film "House by numbers" appears designed to profit from the public and media's ignorance. 18 doctors and scientists interviewed for the film have issued a statement saying that the director was “deceptive” in his interactions with them, that it perpetuates pseudoscience and myths, and that they were selectively quoted to make it seem as if they are in disagreement and disarray, when in fact they agree on all the important facts.

If you want a debate, the debate should be about why elements of the media entertain harmful mistruths about vital subjects.

Chris Kavanagh

Would it be too much to ask that journalists actually do some proper research into the credibility of the arguments put forward in House of Numbers before promoting it to people? It might take a bit more effort but considering this is about a deadly virus that kills millions every year it seems like it's not that much to ask. One or two nights of research will make it all too apparent how ropey the arguments are and how it is, in fact, an aids denialism film.

Michael

I have seen the film, and I understand why so many, particularly the doctors who are in the film, are sooooo upset by it. The film shows all of the "hiv/aids" experts completely disagreeing with each other, and often even with their own selves. They can't agree on which tests work and which are worthless. They can't even agree on a definition of what AIDS is. They can't agree on who has it and who doesn't. They can't agree on what part of it that hiv might play. They can't agree if drugs are They can't even agree with themselves. One top notch aids researcher claims "hiv absolutely kills all T cells, then a moment later says "it doesn't kill all T cells". Stack them all together, and you get a 'Tower of Babble'.

No wonder they are furious. They have all made their very own selves as well as each other to look like the imbeciles that, upon inspection, they undoubtedly are. And to think we have set these madmen loose with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend as they please!

Fragmeister

Ryan would be well served to try to answer his questions rather than blithely pose them. That is, of course, what science does. One site he might wish to visit would answer his question about antibody testing: http://www.avert.org/testing.htm#.

It is valid to pose questions but it is insufficient to pose them and say that there is a case to be answered in science. Very often the case has already been answered. If you wish to turn the Spectator into a branch of the Daily Mail as far as science journalism goes, then you will find yourself being linked to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science site where the journalism will be properly criticised. This film has already been dealt with there and did not come out very well.

Tony F.

i believe hiv (or whatever virus(es) are triggering the hiv antibody test) initially make the person very sick, but any normal person will eventually defeat it. Unfortunately for them, though, is that they'll always have the antibodies, and society will consider them 'infected' with something bad.

The people who died, did so because they were wracked with fear, got pnuemonia from taking too many antibiotics, and destroyed their hearts and liver with aids meds.

Argue all you want, but there are hundreds of thousands who will never take meds, and are living long health lives.

HIV might lead to AIDS, but only because of the chain of events that follow being diagnosed HIV+, not because the virus itself is anything too terrible.

Michael

The most hillarious thing about those posting here who are upset with the film is that not a single one of them has even seen it.

The most hillarious thing about the doctors and researchers who were in the film and are now complaining about it, is that not a single one of them has even seen it.

The most hillarious thing about those who complain that the film has taken statements out of context is that not a single of the complainers has stated exactly what statement(s) in the film are taken out of context.

What they really are upset about, is that it shows the complete fools they have played the public for, and the complete fools that they obviously must themselves be.

As for myself, I would really like to know the answer to a couple of questions?

Why are the EXACT YEARS of highest aids deaths also the EXACT YEARS that high dosage AZT was given to every person who tested positive on the flakey HIV tests? And why did AIDS deaths plummet as soon as high dose AZT was discontinued?

By the way, it was due to the screaming of those people who are called "denialists" that high dose AZT was ended. There are millions of people diagnosed as hiv who now owe those damn "aids denialists" their very lives.

And according to aids researcher Amy Justice, who looked at 5700 aids deaths since AZT monotherapy ended, she found that LIVER FAILURE is now the leading cause of death in the hiv diagnosed who take the post-AZT medications.

Seems those AIDS researchers and anti-hiv drug promoters have some serious questions to answer that they wish to avoid as long as possible. Such as explaining how they inadvertently and unintentionally led 500,000 Americans to their early deaths, and countless more worldwide.

Oh, surely the treatments for the real diseases, as well as attending to nutritional deficiencies and other real problems had saved lots of lives of the hiv diagnosed, but explanations are needed for the millions who died directly from the aids drugs themselves.

The media has much to answer to as well, for such as crucifying Mbeki who did his best to keep highly flawed hiv tests and deadly toxic AZT out of his country, and who merely sought help with the devastation of poverty and malnutrition and dirty water and lives lived in poverty and hopelessness that fostered most of the death and sickness in his country.

Many have lots to answer for, and they will fight like hell to keep any of the reality of the situation from coming before the public. Just look at the backlash in these threads against this film that exposes just the tip of the iceberg!

Jonny

The Speccy should focus its attention on the weird cult of Peter Duesberg and AIDS denialism instead of pedaling recycled psuedo-science crap from a film masquerading as investigative journalism.
Lets focus on why Mbeki hired a clique of fringe wierdos and disgraced scientists to 'advise' him on withhold HIV treatment to his countrymen thus causing 400,000 unnecessary deaths. The real story is why a tiny gaggle of misfits get any media attention at all and persist spouting a random collection of myths about HIV testing, HIV treatment and HIV transmission. Denialists seem to gather around a strange collection of agendas but why HIV ? I don't get it.

AndyinBrum

You'll also find that Ben Goldacre's noticed this article and is banging his head slowly and repeatedly against the brick wall of your naievity

DavidL

Maybe the extract is misleading but it doesn't seem to do quite what is being alleged is on the tin. There is no doubt that certain people have a natural immunity to HIV. The best documented examples are in sex workers in east Africa. There is no doubt that HIV is generally "hard" to catch although some can be unlucky and blood transfusion was an easy way in the early days.
None of this raises any question that the causal link between HIV and AIDS is 100%. It merely suggests that there are angles which should be explored in looking for cures or immunisation. Maybe I am missing something not having seen the whole program but what is the story here?

Joe Stokely

Thanks to The Spectator for getting the word out about this. We know many so called "HIV positives" from all over the world that have either never started taking the drugs or have quit them like my wife has and are doing well. Read our story here: www.myspace.com/rethinkaids

There is an organised effort to discredit people like us that decide to go public about this. They don't even know us and know nothing about us or the others they try to discredit. I hope they can't sleep at night for false accusations. I sleep very well with a clear conscience. My wife Karri was not very well when she decided to quit her HIV drugs although she was just happy to be alive thinking the drugs were somehow prolonging her life. She got her health back after quitting the drugs and has not looked back. Many others have done the same before and after her. I would like to see these so called do gooders of the public try to shut us up. We are getting the word out and we are not stopping and that is a promise. This thing has gone on long enough and it will end someday and I have no idea when. When is does become public knowledge that HIV is a fraud, I would hate to be one of these that have been publicly denouncing the HIV questioners.

Read for yourself to decide if I'm on the level or not and read my wifes story in the link above. We are not crazy, folks, We just are dealing with thing called an HIV+ diagnosis that happened to my wife in 1996 and how badly we were deceived. If you are unfamiliar to any of this I invite you to read up on what the AIDS Industry tells you, then read what the HIV questioners are saying.

I expect to draw fire from the HIV proponents but I know what I know and my wife is healthy now and living her life happily. My wife could die tomorrow and these proponents would say she died of AIDS. If I died tomorrow they would probably say I died of AIDS and I am HIV negative. We are given a day to be born and a day to die and none of us knows what day that will be when we meet our maker. We live life healthy and to the fullest every day, thanking God that we have been given another day to live.

Thanks for reading and decide for yourself.
Joe Stokely

Jack

Well done, Fraser. You've discovered that saying controversial things produces pretty spikes in your web stats. Good luck with that strategy.

Ben Goldacre

Hi Fraser,

I'd like to discuss these very issues with you for a podcast, tomorrow (Friday) would be ideal, 30 mins ideally, 15 mins is okay, I can come to you or we can do on the phone.

Could you get in touch?

ben@badscience.net

Look forward to hearing from you.

Ben
www.badscience.net

BLBS

If you don't mind associating The Spectator with the likes of Matthias Rath, knock yourselves out. That's then Rath employee David Rasnick in the blue check shirt, top right, about four and a half minutes into the film. His head has been cropped out of the frame so you can't recognize him though. The full shot is here: http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e11/aids-to-the-enemy.3353841.51.jpg

This is also a direct quote from Brent Leung in the film:

“In late 2007, Science Daily reported that three prominent research teams had published papers in the Journal of Immunology challenging the theory that the sudden loss of T cells triggers disease in AIDS. If the sudden loss of T cells in HIV-positive individuals can’t explain why people get disease, then there must be co-factors that cause people to get sick and die; or factors that have absolutely nothing to do with HIV.”

And this is contact info for an author on two of the papers being referred to:

http://www.med.upenn.edu/micro/faculty/silvestri.html

I urge you to contact Guido Silvestri, run Leung's quote about his studies by him and ask whether it is in any way an accurate representation of what the studies showed, and then publish Silvestri's response.

BLBS

This is Luc Montagnier's Wall Street Journal editorial from last year:

The Next Steps to Take in Beating AIDS - We're still making progress on drugs and vaccines.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455090257552591.html

This section may sound a little familiar, only it's about his ideas for therapeutic vaccination, not nutrition:

"More than 10 years ago, I proposed using vaccination against HIV antigens not for prophylaxis, but as additional therapy following a short antiviral treatment. I would like to reiterate and update this proposal.

The objective is to make the infected patient's immune system fully competent, after only partial restoration by an antiretroviral treatment reducing the viral load in the blood to undetectable levels. But some infectious particles will persist in the blood. We should analyze the nature of such particles and look for their origin. At the same time, the immune system should be fully restored by proper adjuvants.

We can then begin vaccination using genetically manipulated viral antigens. Thereafter, antiretroviral therapy is stopped. If the vaccination has succeeded in reprogramming the immune responses (humoral and cellular) against HIV, there will be no rebound of virus multiplication and signs of its presence will disappear. If the vaccine fails, virus multiplication will resume and antivirals should be given again.

We want to extend what Mother Nature bestows upon a few lucky individuals (infection without disease) to a majority of patients. This will remove the burden of life-long drug therapy and prevent the HIV infection from evolving into disease.

In developing countries, many infected patients refuse to be tested and are not treated because of the stigma attached to AIDS. The availability of a treatment able to eradicate the infection will change their attitudes. The epidemic will thus gradually decrease, perhaps helped by a preventive vaccine derived from a successful therapeutic vaccine."

Ben Goldacres mum

Top marks to Fraser Nelson for having the gumption to not be swayed by those who insist that there is no debate about HIV & AIDS. The AIDS orthodoxy are not referred to as the 'Church of AIDS' for no good reason. You can tell by their criticism of House of Numbers that they haven't even seen the film and/or have no grasp of the subject matter.

The very fact that they use the word 'denialist' goes to illustrate the extremely low depths they will go to, to try and belittle any counter argument that has raged since Gallo the almighty cast down his 'carved in stone' decree that his theory could not be and must not be challenged. AIDS denial /holocaust denial, oh what a clever bunch you are.

Thank you AIDS orthodoxists for the continual belly laughs you provide us all with.

BLBS

Since there are a bunch of the film's supporters here, perhaps they can explain to us what studies Brent Leung was referring to in that quote I posted, and how they support Leung's claim that co-factors "must" be involved in AIDS or that HIV doesn't cause AIDS at all. Perhaps Mr. Leung might even do us the courtesy of explaining himself.

Ben Goldacres Dad

I looked up what BLBS said. I think is is very interesting to note the Science Daily Article.

Here is what they said, "ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2007) — A sudden loss of T cells -- white blood cells crucial to the immune system -- is not the trigger for the onset of AIDS, according to a study published in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of Immunology by a team of researchers at Tulane National Primate Research Center.

The study challenges current thinking regarding AIDS, namely that a sudden, acute loss of T cells is considered to be sufficient to predict progression to the disease's last stages--final collapse of the immune system and death."

I wonder what people think about this?

Ben Goldacres Dad

Since Luc Montagnier was quoted from the Wall Street Journal I would also like to quote him.

DT: Why no purification?

Luc Montagnier: I repeat we did not purify.

Not only has luc admitted he never actually found HIV, he also says HIV can't cause AIDS. It needs cofactors. That was over the years. It seems as he gets older, he brings the truth out. Now he says HIV can be cleared. It would appear the truth is slowly coming out.

Star Zwan

The problem with HIV is that in the west where nutrition is very good people have been recommended to go in ARVs as early as possible. Therefore I do not think anyone can be objective about the true progression of HIV in those circumstances. However there is a growing group of LTNP Long term non-progressors ie people diagnosed positive who have never been ill, many for decades. This has led to debate about the validity of the test which has also been ignored. I think the public must get involved as inconsistencies are becoming quite alarming, the recent Luc Montagnier statement does not clarify things at all. After 25yrs of this will undoubtedly kill this statement has caused shoke waves especially amoung those who depend on the sale of drugs and the perpetuation of the reigning paradigm. If there is no killer HIV then what next for humanity? To avoid public debate is a shame and to declare all who do not concur denialists is very shortsighted indeed and a travesty in an age of general public sophistication and highest levels of education in all time. To declare the public unable to understand this matter is quite damning for the HIV science, reluctance to open their books to public scrutiny is very suspicious indeed.

Michael

Dear sweet frazzly haired Ben Goldacre,

On Behalf of Fraser, I hope you are in a men's loo while reading this, as I notice from your notorious loo video interview that your best answers seem to come when you are inhaling the vapors of such. Could you please answer these 4 question that your fellow aids truthers refuse to touch with a barge pole:

Why are the EXACT YEARS of highest aids deaths also the EXACT YEARS that high dosage AZT was given to every person who tested positive on the flakey HIV tests?

And why did AIDS deaths plummet to current levels as soon as high dose AZT was discontinued?

And why has not even a SINGLE anti-hiv drug been tested against placebo since the very short 4 month trial of AZT in 1987?

And why, are the results of less toxic drugs being compared to the deadly drug AZT in order to call these FDA Black Label Fast-Tracked drugs "live saving" and "life extending" drugs?

Matter of fact, Benny, I dare you to answer them! But do try not to get your hair any more frazzled than it already is while you yank upon it while snorting the vapors in the loo while trying to come up with answers to the above!

Love and Kisses,

Michael

Sadun Kal

I just want to say that "AIDS denialism" is a much more complex topic than it would look to an outsider who didn't do many hours of research about all the dynamics within that "movement". As a "denialist" myself -"HIV skeptic" is more accurate though- I concur that, just like the AIDS orthodoxy, people like Peter Duesberg, David Rasnick, or Matthias Rath and people with similar arguments, indeed rely on flawed, inadequate, incomplete science. And yes, I do believe that their words can indeed be harmful for uninformed people out there.

But I also know that people like Ben Goldacre or Richard Wilson don't possess the knowledge to make reliable judgments about "AIDS denialism". Neither of them understand that "authority" or "consensus" has absolutely nothing to do with true science, and they didn't do the research to know whether or not the "HIV" theory is indeed the best theory that explains the currently available scientific data. There is in fact a lot of things that should be discussed and I congratulate Spectator for showing the courage to consider it.

And you might ask who is left that is reliable then?

The answer for me is the Perth Group from Australia, led by Eleni Papadopulos, who is also featured in the film saying that the available data doesn’t prove “HIV”’s existence. There is unfortunately a lot of hidden political struggle within the so called "dissident movement" itself, where the science of the Perth Group is suppressed due to the strong influence of people like Duesberg.

If the Spectator's discussion panel won't contain information about the Perth Group's work, then I myself am not sure if it will be a more beneficial or harmful event. And looking at the language used above I don't see any awareness of the Perth Group's work, since they fundamentally question the concept of "HIV" instead of just this concept's hypothetical relation to the concept of "AIDS". You know the "HIV has turned out not to BE!" kind of stuff, to quote from the film's trailer. The Perth Group raises fundamental questions about the methods used in modern virology to claim that "HIV" as a unique type of "retrovirus" exists. There is nothing more critical in this debate than these questions.

In this case, since there is unlikely to be any acknowledgment of the PG, the discussion should perhaps focus on the inadequacy of the orthodox scientific community instead of wasting time with the also-inadequate science of Duesbergian people. Or maybe both sides' inadequacy can be objectively discussed, but the latter would probably be confusing and fruitless.

If possible, I'd request Spectator to find someone who can represent the Perth Group over there. Maybe people from the organization HEAL London can do that, I don't think the filmmakers can properly achieve that on their own. And please at least try spend time on questions related to the Perth Group's work instead of just the popular Duesberg's.

Those who're willing to inform themselves about the significant internal conflicts among dissident scientists can partially do so at the website of the Treatment Information Group from South Africa.

James

Its interesting that the so-called denialists who have turned their backs on HIV treatment and renounced their positive HIV tests have never won a penny in compensation claims from the pharmaceutical companies or taken action through the courts for alleged malpractice by their doctors. If the link between HIV and AIDS were not cast iron, or HIV tests incredibly accurate, or HIV drugs keeping people alive rather than kill people as many have alleged, then surely there would have been some sensational court cases and massive compensation claims that would have made headline news ? If there is a whiff of a scandal around the HIV "debate" I'd like to see the those who feel they have suffered alleged medical-malpractice through being prescribed HIV anti-retrovirals sue their clinicians and the drugs companies. Would this not settle the matter once and for all ?

The only time I know of the denialists arguments being tested out in court was where when the self-styled expert witness and laboratory technician, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, was descibed by the judge as "promoting a cause.. has no formal qualifications in these disciplines .. ". Needless to say her "expert" evidence was ridiculed and thrown out. For those who are interesting in finding out more about the faces behind the film, potted biographies are here: http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/denialists. (the website is run by a group of medics and scientists)

James

Amongst an incoherent list of false statements, the "Perth Group" allege "the impossibility of haemophiliacs acquiring HIV following factor VIII infusions." (http://www.theperthgroup.com/whatargued.html) However the opposite conclusion has been accepted in courts around the world and millions in compensation paid out to victims of this terrible mistake. Need I go on ... Why are these people given any credibility when their website is so full of basic mistakes and manifest untruths (such as questioning HIV tests) ?

jonny

If this film does go on general release, how much is it going to cost the NHS ? The burden on HIV clinics is already immense, new cases of all STDs are on the the rise and there's evidence that the lessons learnt in the late eighties and nineties are being jettisoned. Alas questioning established medical science in the guise of reportage is likely the decisions of many people not to get tested, to come off their ARVs and to abandon safe sex. If South African President can fall for this nonsense then where does that leave a generation of internet savvy kids ?

Peter Laing

Fraser, as 'the argument is worth having' I assume you will be taking up Ben Goldacre's invitation for a podcast?

Katherine

Fraser,
The naivety of your blog would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. If you were at all suspicious of what people mean when they talk about AIDS denialism, you can see for yourself what it is, by reading the many comments you have attracted on this very blog.

Many people may watch this movie, see advertisements for it or watch clips on you website – who do not have access to the information that many of the scientists in the film have condemned it. This film and blogs like this create confusion and misunderstanding around HIV. This impacts on the lives of people living with HIV by adding to the stigma and prejudice they face and by spreading dangerous confusion that can led to new infections or delays in starting treatment.

Instead of suggesting people watch this movie, I suggest you take the time to education yourself about HIV.

There are over 80,000 people living with HIV in the UK. Late diagnosis of HIV remains a serious issue, with a third of people with HIV in the UK diagnosed late (after a point at which they should have started treatment and some when they are already seriously ill). Today if you are diagnosed early and take treatment you can live a long life with HIV. If you delay getting diagnosed or starting treatment HIV remains a serious life-threatening illness. Confusion such as that propagated in this film may delay or stop some people getting tested or starting treatment. Not only does this have a serious affect on that individual’s health but there is also evidence that undiagnosed HIV infection accounts for 50% of new infections.

Good websites for you to start your education are:
www.worldaidsday.org
www.aidsmap.com
www.nat.org.uk
http://www.hpa.org.uk/HPA/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/1200660065903/

I suggest you postpone this showing until you have educated yourself and are in a position to make an appropriate judgement about promoting this film.

_G_

Perhaps Fraser Nelson should read this article "AIDS denial costs lives". It was published in his magazine afterall.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/12613/part_1/aids-denial-costs-lives.thtml

Star Z

The HIV test comes with a cavet in the leaflet available on the FDA site. It says the test is not meant to diagnosis HIV infection. It is not certified to do what is is supplied to do? If you are not yet aware of this then your knowledge is based on second hand information nd you are desperate need of an awareness of the facts of HIV medicine. The medicine comes with a black box warning- it is equivalent to the scull and cross bones of pesticides. When applied in hos[pital nurses wear gloves to hanndle the pills after observation tha their fingers were losing skin! The NHS will have many costs indeed as a result of the need tl explain to their customers that they were not thorough at all in deciding the treatments. Luc Montagnier says he has never isolated the virus, not from the blood of a positive person or anyone. Koch's postulate has never been fulfilled- the step that revealed palagra to be a deficiency and not an infection. This is a confession that complete information has never been known. The observations amoung gays in the 80s could therefore have been caused by anything at all and the squalor and starvation conditions in Africans are known for centuries to cause health issues rapidly reversed by nutrition and access to clean water. The HIV story is not so criptic that the public cannot understand. Calling all the world under qualified and unable to assess the inconsistencies that support the HIV=AIDS=DEATH continuum is criminal.Teach us then why you are right, how modest a hero are you all to not want to defend your posotion? I dont think so. I sense panic in the ranks as Luc M discloses this little truth to the world, although research published already showed the frican damned reverse AIDS and/or slow progression when supplied with a multivitamin supplement alone. Children born poz revert to negative without medication within 2 years? Yes, so why medicate the whole world at birth! Let the world see your deeds, show no fear as they judge the outcome of your life's work, your impact on others who dependeed on you.

ColinW

Caspar Melville has now changed his mind about House of Numbers, having done some research into tht AIDS denialist nutters & now realises that he was conned into supporting the film - this from his blog...

"The best thing I’ve come across so far is this excellent New Scientist piece by Jonny Steinberg (see our review of his book about Aids) which not only summarises the deluded AIDS-denial case but outs several of Brent Lueng’s informants: Christine Maggiore, whose AIDS denial Steinberg argues contributed to the death of her daughter, and her own death in December 2008 (something that is not mentioned in the film), and Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos from the ‘Perth Institute’, who feels able to appear in court and claim that HIV doesn’t exist on the basis of her scientific qualifications that amount to an undergraduate degree in nuclear physics.

One of the big problems about debates around AIDS is that, as Louise Foxcroft noted to me, there is a tendency to answer arguments you don’t agree by ‘lobbing dead babies’. Both sides claim to be saving lives with what they are saying, and imply the opposing view are wasting them. That said I must say that I feel chastened by the statistic provided by Steinberg that Thabo Mbeki's adoption of the denialist argument and consequent antipathy to allowing ART in South Africa has reliably been estimated to have resulted in 365,000 premature deaths in that country. Though the arguments about scientific orthodoxy and the limits of free speech are interesting and valid, those issues do somewhat pale in comparison with such a number.

So, for the record, I now think that House of Numbers is a poor piece of work. As science it is hopeless, and hopelessly compromised by its (mis)use of ‘experts’ and misrepresentations of the debate (fourteen of the scientifically credible interviewees have signed a letter claiming that they were mislead or misrepresented by the film) as well as more generally by its lack of depth, context and style. It is an AIDS-denial film, in that it is entirely congruent with, and draws on the argument and resources of, the AIDS-denial movement (however much the film's director and producer dispute this). This does not mean that everything it says is wrong, or that AIDS treatment is perfect or could not be improved. I’m still glad I saw it and would defend the right of everyone else too, but I think it deserves and should be met by a vigorous response from those who know the area well.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get Seth Kalichman’s book Denying AIDs to make sure that I don’t make the same mistake again. Oh yeah and Ben, next time I'll make sure to read your columns every week. D'oh.

So there’s the story. Please do post a comment if you feel moved to. .

Posted by Caspar Melville at Monday, September 21, 2009

Richard Wilson

Hey Fraser I’ve got an idea – there are a good few of us who’d be delighted to debate AIDS denial with you, but don’t have £35 to spare for a ticket to next week’s event. Also, I don’t think that verbal jousting achieves very much if people can’t quickly and easily check the references being cited.

So instead, we’d like to invite you to a ‘tweet off’ on this subject at the time of your choosing. How about it?

Richard
www.twitter.com/dontgetfooled

Gus Cairns

Hi Fraser,

I wrote to you separately about the whole AIDS-denialist thing.

But about this clip? Eh???

How in any way does the fact that not everyone exposed to HIV will automatically catch it create a doubt that HIV is the caue of AIDS?

It's like saying that because not everyone who's been in a tube carriage with a sneezing flu victim will get flu, that the influenza virus doesn't cause flu.

"Exposed uninfected" people have been around since the start of the epidemic. You could even be one of them! You won't test HIV positive but highly sensitive immune testing might reveal signs that you've shrugged off HIV in the past.

Such people haven't been researched enough, true, but there's nothing surprising about their existence.

The reason why, on average, it takes repeated exposures to HIV to cause an infection is partly because some people may have a degree of pre-existing immunity to it.

It may also be about something as simple as the amount of virus you get inside your system in one shot - below a certain threshold, you body can contain it.

This causes the paradoxical effect that people who have repeated exposure to small doses of HIV may have very good immunity to it.

The people in whom that immunity was demonstrated, in one famous survey, to be particularly strong, was a group of Kenyan prostitutes - the very dprevied Africans you might think had weak immune systems.

So lots of intriguing directions for research, sure, as Montagnier himself says....but evidence that questions the link between HIV and AIDS?? None.

Gus Cairns
Editor HIV Treatment Update
(Oh yes and 24 years HIV+, on antiretorvirals and healthy)

Tim

My word. There are a few freaky postings here. I just want to pick up on one which is laden with inaccuarcy but seems to be used to back up paranoid suspicions about the existance of HIV without any basis in scientific fact. Ryan (posted 4.41 Oct 22nd) posed six questions which were all based on wild and incorrect assumption. Here I've pasted them word for word and I'm going to answer them one by one:

Q: Why are they only able to test you for HIV anti-bodies?

Wrong. They are not. Tests to detect the virus itself exist and are commonly used, and here are two examples: PCR testing is used to measure an infected patient's HIV viral load - that is the number of viral particles in a millilitre of blood. This test detects the RNA (ribonucleic acid - a retrovirus' equivalent of DNA) of HIV particles itself. This is not used as a diagnostic tool as the test results can take two weeks to come back and it is expensive. Secondly, a common diagnostic test that is used these days is the p24 antigen test, which detects the p24 protein (or the capsid protein) which, again, is part of the virus itself. The antibody (ELISA / Western Blot) test is cheap and very accurate and is still used in diagnostics. However, it is not uncommon for clinics to use a combined Duo test - that is an antibody / p24 antigen test - to look for both the virus and the antibodies.

Q: Why do some people test negative, then positive, then negative, then positive?

Despite diagnostic testing being extremely accurate these days - and depending on the test used we are looking at figures around 99.9% accuracy - there is still that 0.1% of tests, or whatever, that will throw up false positives or false negatives. That's the nature of all diagnostic testing. Nothing is always completely 100% accurate. A very, very few number of people will get innacurate results. That doesn't mean HIV doesn't exist.

Q: Why do they drugs they prescribe, the cocktails, act in the same manner as HIV is supposed to (destroying the immune system)?

Wrong. They don't (sigh). Ok, so here we go, class by class of anti-HIV drugs: NRTIs and NNRTIs inhibit the action of the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase. This is what HIV uses to convert its RNA into viral DNA inside a human CD4 cell at the start of HIV's replication process. They do not target the human immune system. Protease Inhibitors inhibit the enzyme Protease which is used by HIV inside a CD4 cell to divide itself up into new HIV copies at the end of the replication process. They do not target the human immune system. Integrase Inhibitors target the enzyme Integrase which enables HIV's viral DNA produced after the 'reverse transcription' process to be incorporated into the human CD4 cell's own DNA. They do not target the human immune system. Finally, Entry Inhibitors work in a number of ways. I suppose you could say that these target the human immune system but they do so to protect, not to destroy. They lock onto human CD4 cells in exactly the place (the co-receptor) that HIV uses to fuse with the cells, hence stopping HIV from entering the cells in the first place.

Q: Why in the U.S. is it STILL 90% men while in Africa it is 50/50?

In the US (and most of the Western world) HIV epidemic started in the gay community and hence became a virus that mainly infected gay men. To this day gay men are much more affected by HIV infection that heterosexuals in the West. Hence - more men infected than women. It's not rocket science. In Africa HIV has always been a heterosexual disease. Hence - men and women both (equally or not) affected by HIV.

Q: Why do the same groups of people who die and contract diseases from HIV/AIDS, die from the same diseases without HIV/AIDS?

Wrong - they don't. Take a few common AIDS defining illnesses - let's say PCP (a type of pneumonia, and one of the most common causes of AIDS-related death) .. this was very rare until the HIV epidemic began. It used to be seen only in cancer patients whose immune systems had been damaged by chemotherapy. Before HIV, hardly anyone died from PCP. After the emergence of HIV, plenty did. Another is KS (Kaposi's Sarcoma) - a type of skin cancer which was very uncommon until the HIV epidemic. Both of these only take hold with very weak immune systems and so something needs to destroy the immune system before they can. What could that something be if HIV doesn't exist? Most deaths from AIDS-related illnesses would have been considered very unusual until the HIV epidemic.

Q: Why are you people incapable of doing any actual research and asking real questions, instead of blindly accepting what is fed to you?

I would ask you the same question. Next time - do your research.

Tim

I need to address another post which is again based on utter nonsense. Star Z, you said the following:

"If you are not yet aware of this then your knowledge is based on second hand information nd you are desperate need of an awareness of the facts of HIV medicine. The medicine comes with a black box warning- it is equivalent to the scull and cross bones of pesticides. When applied in hos[pital nurses wear gloves to hanndle the pills after observation tha their fingers were losing skin!"

This is complete rubbish. HIV meds do not do this. I've been handling 3TC, efavirenz, abacavir, tenofovir and now etravirive for nearly 10 years without gloves (shock). I have all my skin and my hands are lovely and soft thank you. The boxes do not come with a 'black box' warning - they are just lioke any other prescribed medicine box. I suggest that it is you who is in "desperate need of an awareness of the facts of HIV medicine". Scaremongering and factless posts like this can be very damaging. Newly diagnosed and potentially vulnerable people don't need to have lies peddled to them which may make them doubt the science fact behind HIV. That only serves to increase the risk that they will not engage with following proper effective medical treatment and could result in seroius health problems or even their death. Snake oil anyone?

Gus Cairns

One more addition to the myths elegantly demolished in Tim's posting:

"Why in the U.S. is it STILL 90% men while in Africa it is 50/50?"

It isn’t. “In 2007 73% of adults and adolescents living with HIV/AIDS in the USA were male, and of them 64% had been exposed through male-to-male sexual contact”. (Info from the Centers for Disease Control surveillance report).
This means that under half - 47% - of people with HIV in the USA are gay men.

Mark Weston

No you shouldn't publish it (unless you have a cranky conspiracy theory section) because it's rubbish and could lead to people dying if they believe such guff. There is a multitude of scientific evidence to prove that HIV causes AIDS. Moreover, in all my years working in the international public health field in Africa and the West I've met one person who was HIV-positive and didn't end up needing antiretroviral drugs. And this guy says that he is such a rarity that he has been a veritable pincushion for scientific researchers trying to find out what stops HIV turning into AIDS.

Al

Oh no - spent some time looking at the insanity of antivaccine crowd on the Wired website yesterday and now it's the Spectator and AIDS denialists. At least Wired had written a long article defending vaccines - Spectator is actually supporting the madness. As with anti-vaccine issue; there is no debate, there is no argument about what is true in the science community. All that the anti-AIDS/HIV community has is weird anecdotes and stories of successes (whilst ignoring the deaths of their true believers and tens of thousands of innocents).

BLBS

Thanks to G for posting the link to the Spectator article debunking Rian Malan. Malan is featured in House of Numbers, his opinions are treated as legitimate, and according to the photos on the film's Facebook page, the boom mike operator for the interview was then Matthias Rath employee and longtime AIDS denialist David Rasnick. Here's the shot, with Leung and Malan having a bit of a giggle:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1540222&id=40491054861

David Rasnick thinks all HIV testing should be outlawed and anti-HIV treatments banned. He also thinks SARS was invented by the Bush administration to undermine the Chinese economy. The Spectator should invite him to participate in the "debate."

To the person quoting the Science Daily reprint of a Tulane University press release, the questions I asked were about how the studies show that "there must be co-factors that cause people to get sick and die; or factors that have absolutely nothing to do with HIV.”

Diversity

Fraser,
You are a superb journalist, but his time you have been led up the wall.

A while ago the Royal Society published a very nice bit of statistical analysis of the likelihood of death from an untreated HIV infection. Expected total deaths from Aids for those infected with HIV was about 60%. The deaths peaked around 7 or 8 years after infection and declined to very low numbers after 15 years. On that basis, I could tell a friend infected with HIV over 10 years ago that he now has a life expectancy double mine.

That paper got little publicity. It is a statistical tour de force and most people think twice about trusting those without further testing. However, since then (see Mark Weston above) a good many researchers are looking at the queation of why and how some people survive HIV.

The killer point though is that with treatment, expected deaths for HIV infection are now down in the single percents. The treatments work.

TruthSeeker

I see you all have learned you HIV=AIDS dogma quite well. There is currently no test for HIV or AIDS. The test is an antibody test that is neither valid or reliable. Manufacturers include inserts that say the tests cannot verify whether a person has the virus or not. Should there at least be an international standard in testing criteria for a so-called global epidemic? Any of you kneejerkers heard of the Padian Study? The sad part is of few of you have actually seen the documentary and you have no clue that all Brent Leung did was ask questions and let the scientists disagree and contradict each other. Consensus my ass. Wanna get rid of your AIDS diagnosis? Move to Canada.

DarthInsidious

I'd like to pose a question myself, unfortunately for us all I don't think there have been any studies done in this regard so I cannot provide you dear readers with the answer. Contrary to the questions posed by Ryan and Vincent. I suspect a little research on your part might go some way to answering the questions you pose. And just for the record scientists do not always agree with each other, it would be somewhat of a stagnant subject if they did. Throw a little clever editing into that mix and you have something that can easily lead the uniformed down the garden path.

Still quite enough of that, my question is this: Just what do we do with the seemingly increasing number of the uninformed being lead so astray by other uniformeds, from HIV/AIDS denialism to climate change denialism to those who denied the link between smoking and cancer? I am certainly no expert in the field of HIV/AIDS, and as such would not deem to comment on it, but my suspicions lead me to believe that many of the doubters are no experts either. However, contrary to my point of view, these non-experts do seem to believe the seeds of doubt sown by other non-experts, who often call on them to put aside any and all evidence by actual experts, that's people who actually know what they are talking about, and believe the rubbish they are fed.

As I say above questions just like those posed by Ryan and Vincent have been answered, if only they would look for it. I may refer them to Ben Goldacre for some help on this. The overwhelming evidence is that this sort of trash, that's the film being discussed, should be thrown out with the rest of the conspiracy theories that can be found in the 'gullible' section of your local library. To suggest that an entire scientific industry is set up to mislead us all is a misdirected point of view at best. There must be thousands, and most probably many more, scientists working on subjects just like this, in Universities and government funded labs across the world as well as those in big pharma. For the denialists to be right all of these people must be in the same game, i.e. duping us, and that would be one hell of a conspiracy to keep covered up, and then some.

No, my call is this. For those of you not convinced by the evidence provided by the experts please either provide us with the double blind trail data to back your theory up or, alternatively, contact your local university, take the relevant qualifications, get yourselves into a position in which you really can comment on a subject that you currently know little to nothing about and then let us know what you find. Until then please consider the harm your ill considered point of view can cause to real people before you comment. Many thanks.

Reggie Dixon

Money where your mouth is test : Would you agree to be injected with live HIV virus ? Yes or no?

BLBS

The Spectator has opened the casket of denialist ghoul Neville Hodgkinson http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116914&id=40491054861&ref=mf

Hodgkinson was one of the first denialists to quote-mine and misrepresent a Lancet paper on ART, pretending that it showed ART hasn't reduced mortality:

http://www.helpforhiv.com/antiretro.pdf

And here's the explanation of what the study actually shows:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/12/bad-science-peer-review-goldacre?commentid=63866b4b-cab5-4464-9fc2-7724b2e26df8

So, in short, Hodgkinson - like many other denialists including Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber - is prepared to tell people with a life threatening disease that the treatments that have been shown to reconstitute immunity and dramatically reduce illness and mortality do not work. By quote-mining and misrepresenting a published paper.

This is what The Spectator is now supporting.

Tony F.

come on, Tim. You ain't fooling anybody by hyping the PCR viral load test.

Its not used for diagnostic purposes because its inaccurate! Even thebody.com, (the most orthodox site out there) admits this test is known for an exorbitant amount of false positives.

The PCR viral load test will more likely than not find a supposed viral load in people who are otherwise hiv negative. Doctors will only perform it on people supposedly confirmed positive, for that very reason.

So basically, science tells people to base their decision on when to start meds, using a test that 'finds' virus in all people, positive and negative alike.

So again... that leaves us with the ELISA and WB as our only diagnostic tests... which only find antibodies.

Michael

Dear Darthinsidious,
Considering that you yourself freely admitted: "I am certainly no expert in the field of hiv/aids", then the best I can say is How Dare You?!!

How dare you, who self-admittedly has no expertise, or even an unbiased enough mind to recognize that you yourself have insufficient knowledge of the field, how dare you call or label those on the dissident side of the consensus as being the side who are the denialists?

The fact that you used such an ad hominem makes it readily apparent that you are as deluded as any fascist at looking at the issue from a place of non-biased non-emotionalized judgement. For you have already made up your mind, which is perhaps as thick as a brick, as are many comments from those supporting consensus science.

Then you put out this most ridiculous line of reasoning: "For those of you not convinced by the evidence provided by the experts please either provide us with the double blind trail data to back your theory up or, alternatively, contact your local university, take the relevant qualifications, get yourselves into a position in which you really can comment on a subject that you currently know little to nothing about and then let us know what you find."

I have a better suggestion for you, Darth. Why don't you yourself show us the non-existent double blind studies that verify that HIV was first of all isolated directly from the blood of any hiv positives.

The reason I ask, is because it is well known that neither Gallo nor Levy came up with independent isolations. They came up with contaminations of the original findings from Montagnier's patient, but never even found the same presumed to be hiv rna in any other patient.

Next of all, Darth, show us the non-existent double blind study that shows that hiv is the direct cause of aids. After all, Dr. Duesberg, who was called by Gallo himself "the greatest retrovirologist in the world" is far more than qualified and expert in retroviruses to have found that all the presented evidence is severely lacking. So is Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis who has been asking for 20 years for any evidence with any high degree of probability that hiv causes aids. None have yet presented any such evidences.

Or show us the non-existent double blind study that shows that hiv kills any t cells. Or the non-existent study double blind studies that show that any hiv drug has been tested against placebo. Or the non-existent double blind studies that show hiv is sexually transmitted. Where are these studies Darth? Why do they not exist, as if they did, you would be quite right to label the dissident side as "denialists". But the fact is, they do not exist, and your false belief that they do makes you and the other supporters of consensus belief the ULTIMATE in denialists. Your belief is founded upon nothing but belief itself. And you lack the awareness to know that you are hanging your own self by your own ropes.

Juveniles such as yourself might consider doing what you teach. After all, you yourself said: "Until then please consider the harm your ill considered point of view can cause to real people before you comment."

So, unless you are simply teaching what you yourself most need to learn, please remember what all of us will most remember about you, that you yourself admitted that you are: "certainly no expert in the field of hiv/aids".

Many thanks,

Michael

Michael

Reggie,

To begin with, your suggestion, while it may sound very snappy and smart to you, is upon consideration found to be lacking.

If anyone did self inject with supposedly live virus (which by the way, has yet to be isolated DIRECTLY from any individual who has been diagnosed as hiv positive) , and remained fully healthy for the next 30 years, the consensus would still find a multitude of reasons why such a person remained well. He would simply be deemed to be an infected long term nonprogressor with natural immunity to it.

And if the same person lived to be 90 and then died of pneumonia, it would then be claimed that he died of aids.

Therefore, though some have offered to be self injected with whatever it is that the strands of proteins or rna are that they are calling hiv, such would still ultimately prove nothing nor would it accomplish anything. Because first of all, hiv needs to be isolated and purified away from any and all things that could not be a retrovirus, and then, the proof that such an agent actually harmed any t cells would also still need to be established. These have yet to be accomplished or verified, even though hundreds of billions of British pounds and American dollars have been thrown down the well on it.

There is no purified example of anything that is verified to be hiv to even inject anyone with.

An interesting fact is that chimps are the closest to any human DNA in the animal world. Chimps get absolutely EVERY disease that we humans get, except for one. The chimps used in the experiments to determine hiv caused aids are mostly still all alive now 25 years later, except for the ones that died of old age. That alone evidences that whatever it is that they think they isolated and are calling hiv, it cannot possibly be the cause of aids. If it was, those chimps would have all long been dead.

Michael

Michael

Michael

Poor, poor, poor BLBS,

His research funding or job must be very threatened by the aids dissidents exposing the nonsensical hiv=aids beliefs.

Don't worry, BLBS, when your aids funding ends, we will find you a nice job digging graves or hauling garbage, as your present job of making your living from bogus hiv research qualifies you quite well for just such a job.

Love and Kisses,

Michael

BLBS

Neville Hodgkinson on HIV testing in House of Numbers (does he mention he's in the film in the Spectator article? I can't read it):

"it’s a scandal that this test continues to be used"

Can we now expect a campaign by The Spectator to stop testing the blood supply?

DarthInsidious

Touche Micheal, good response...still may I reference Bed Goldacre himself for further info, although admittedly it doesn't answer my double blind point or your double blind query but please investigate http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/ further.

For myself, I shall stick with the more conventional point of view, backed, as it is, by the vast majority of scientists, and consider the doubters as doing far more damage than they do good. Cigarette anyone?

Michael

"Can we now expect a campaign by The Spectator to stop testing the blood supply?"

Stop testing the blood supply for exactly what, my dear deluded BLBS?

The only thing they test the blood supply for is for nonspecific antibodies that could be due to nearly 70 proven and verified factors: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/cjtestfp.htm

BLBS

@ Fortis

The film does mention Christine Maggiore's death in the end credits, saying it was "unrelated to HIV." Her cause of death is listed as disseminated herpes simplex, thrush and bilateral pneumonia. She was 52. And Brent Leung has written: "I am not a denialist."

The film's section on Maggiore also involves her saying she traveled back in time to take a September 1993 HIV test "again" in August 1993.

Michael

JUST OUT AND HOT OFF THE PRESS!

It seems that none of the hiv/aids Truther Goons claims that sex has anything to do with hiv/aids makes any sense at all, as IT HAS JUST BEEN PUBLISHED in The Journal of AIDS And Behavior", an astounding Brown University finding that:

"PROMISCUITY IS NOT BEHIND THE HIV EPIDEMIC"

Say Whhhhhaaaattttt?

That's right. Prepare to laugh your ass off at another of the hiv/aids truther goon's quarter century long claims as soon as you read this:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/health/Promiscuity-not-behind-HIV-epidemic/articleshow/5152594.cms

So what IS behind the "epidemic?

Answer is clear: It is an epidemic of testing and diagnosing people by using the scandalously flawed hiv antibody tests. 100% of the false positive results of these phony and fraudulent tests account for 100% of the epidemic.

You fools who backed this stinking pile of horse manure,who just like witch doctors, use these stinking tests to pass out death sentences and hopelessness and deadly toxic drugs, all the while making your livings from it, better all get down on your knees and PRAY TO YOUR NEAREST GOD that the public never finds out how severely they have all been duped.

Meanwhile, I myself, along with many others, will continue to PRAY that the public DOES find out, and find out quick, before even a single more person is stressed or poisoned to death, or given a death sentence while being told they now the equivalent of a sexual leper due to the false testing diagnoses and death beliefs and toxic drugs that you fools insist they sprinkle on their cornflakes every morning and wash down before going to bed each night.

BLBS

First citation on the list Michael posted of supposed causes of false positives:

52. Snyder H, Fleissner E. 1980. Specificity of human antibodies to oncovirus glycoproteins; Recognition of antigen by natural antibodies directed against carbohydrate structures. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 77:1622-1626.

- Anyone spot the problem?

Also, I may have made it sound like the film lists the causes of Christine Maggiore's death but it does not, those opportunistic infections are cited on the death certificate. The film only states unequivocally that her death was "unrelated to HIV."

Elizabeth Ely

If you have a good immune system, you can clear the virus. And the virus is said to cause a bad immune system. So -- If you have a good immune system, you can avoid getting a bad immune system. It's all so "deceptively simple," isn't it? You could actually be "fooled" by that. But it makes sense to me!

Michael

@BLBS

(does the BS stand for Bull Sh***er?)

As for any who might think that Christine's daughter died of aids, are you aware the coroner didn't find EJ died of aids until informed by the Times aids reporter that Christine was an "aids denialist" who wrote a book about it and breast fed her children? Did that have something to do with finding the kid died of aids?

For all who might think Christine's own illness might have been caused by aids, after the childs death, Christine was not only in a deep and disempowering state of grief, but she was also immediately attacked by nonstop phone calls and emails accusing her of murdering her daughter. She was also put into a state of fear and threatened with arrest and with having her son taken from her. The hate for Christine by the aids truthers was pointed at her on the internet and even on TV until she died, and it still is. She was portrayed on the popular American TV show, LAW and ORDER, as a murderous mother a couple of weeks just before she died. She was to face down the LA coroner in court just a few days after she died. She was certain to have also had extreme fear of going to court, especially after the Law and Order episode, she knew that she herself, not the coroner or his findings, would be the one put on trial. She knew the judge and jury likely saw the Law & Order episode. She knew there would be an endless stream of aids truthers pitted against her.

How much stress/grief did she suffer over the death of her 3 year old child, all the while enduring the threats to take away her son, the investigations of her as a criminal for not giving them hiv tests or drugs, the nonstop emails and calls accusing her of murdering her daughter, the case she tried to make against the coroner, the Law & Order TV episode portraying her as a killer of her own child, on top of any semblance of normal everyday human difficulties, and on top of hundreds of others around the world leaning upon her for their own health and well being?

Christine was indeed one of the emotionally strongest people I have ever known. But she was only human. It took a lot of it, but eventually even the fountain of inner strength and hope that Christine was, the intensity of the negative emotions she must have overwhelmed by finally brought her down as well.

Just how much stress can anyone take before they break or their health gives out? Could any of your own mothers have handled such non-stop intense and intense chronic stress, and stayed healthy or possibly survived going through all that Christine Maggiore was dragged through because she disagreed with the belief that hiv caused aids?

Yet even more disgusting, BLBS, is that people such as yourself dance upon her and her daughters graves to this day. You truly are loathsome and disgusting.

Are there any who could possibly yet question or doubt the effect of intense and chronic stress and being overwhelmed by any such negative emotions such as extreme apathy, grief, fear, shame or guilt and combinations of such upon our mental, spiritual, and physical health and well being?

CWBPI

As a licensed private investigator with 30 years and thousands of criminal cases behind me, I’m struck by how much Mr. Leung has in common with Galileo, who offended Pope Urban by suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe. After all, who would Humanity believe – Rome’s voluminous evidence that the universe revolves around the Earth or the heretical ravings of a mathematician who asked too many questions?

Like Galileo thesis, Leung’s heretical film terrifies a theocracy that has, for 25 years, relied on scientific misconduct, corruption and gay activism to blame the suicidal consequences of their behavior on a retrovirus that is so harmless that HIV co-discoverer and Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier NOW ADMITS CAN BE ELIMINATED NATURALLY WITHIN WEEKS – WITHOUT DRUGS – with nothing more than a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle. Sadly, the promise of money and fame prevented him from admitting this sooner.

How sad that Ryan White’s mother didn’t know this before she killed her son with AZT.

Although these scientists and activists were willing to kill innocent children to cover up their personal pathologies and greed makes them deserving of Humanity’s unflagging contempt, I would not put them to death or in isolation. The confused AIDS con-men who are exposed by Leung’s film should be kept alive and cared for in a human zoo where ordinary people, researchers and real scientists can explore the depths of their pathologies – so that future generations can be warned before buying into the next deadly political disease.

Sooner or later, all scams come to an end. House of Numbers reminds AIDS researchers and activists that their days are numbered.

Elizabeth Ely

I once read an explanation by Neville Hodgkinson (wish I could find the link right now) about where the tests came from. They were developed to test the blood supply. They measured certain proteins as being in high concentration in AIDS (GRID) patients' blood. Not existed -- they exist in everybody -- but existed in a high concentration. They weren't making this up. They observed this. So they decided, better safe than sorry, let's "screen" blood for this until we know what this is. And let's set the threshold even below what these guys have in their blood. Just to be safe. So, based on these tests, they threw out some blood that was probably safe, but I feel safer, don't you?

But then, say you start applying this test to people, not bags of blood. And you start throwing them -- people -- out with yesterday's trash. (They're all from bad neighborhoods anyway.) You tell them they're "infected with a virus" even though the tests don't even detect viruses. You tell them they're going to get "AIDS" and die, even though the tests don't predict that. And you conveniently forget to tell them that a lot of healthy people get this high concentration of proteins in their blood -- well, maybe it means they have a little problem there, a little oxidative stress or a recent pregnancy or flu shot, but they're not going to die of AIDS. And then, just to be really devious, you invent something that picks up random pieces of RNA present in the human genome and call it "viral load." When anyone says you're wrong, you just point to the label: "viral load." It counts virus, you idiot! But it doesn't. It's just called that.

Now let's take this one step further. Whenever somebody (like me) says this doesn't make sense, you point to that person and say they're a genocidal, homophobic "denialist." And you tell any patient who looks this up and asks a few questions that they're "in denial."

What's the next step? Locking people up for not believing? Sorry, they've already thought of that. Check out the numbers of people put in prison for reckless sexual endangerment of partners who didn't even get sick. Or the children taken from their parents for medical neglect if they don't take their AZT. In New York. Since the early '90s. Check it out: www.askdeblasiowhy.com. And get back to me with how you're sure this didn't really happen, and you would be the first to protest if it did. Would you? OK, so volunteer to tell people about it (or how it's all a hoax, I don't care) at the Park Slope Halloween Parade in Brooklyn next week. Send me an e-mail. Thanks! Beth

Charles

You don't debate science in quite the same way you debate politics. A lack of evidence or expertise and a willingness to make things up that peppers this blog is not the standard in science - it shouldnt be here either but never mind.

Perhaps Fraser would like to tell us his theory behind the aetiology of immune deficiency?

Ben Goldacres mum

I will not hear another word against ARV's. I mean c'mon you crazy denialist guys and gals, everyone knows that retroviruses play no role in human health, right??........right??

And what harm really could the drugs do? If you read the list of major side-effects under the 'common' heading you can almost feel the glowing health pulsing through the bodies of those taking them.

http://www.aidsmap.com/files/file1003254.pdf

Michael

@ Tim

Tim, You have just verified in your own words that attempted to defend the HIV test that ALL hiv positive test results are FALSE POSITIVES.

Poor foolish Tim, another of the experts on HIV has failed basic math as he was explaining the accuracy and failure rate of the HIV tests. He said:

"Despite diagnostic testing being extremely accurate these days - and depending on the test used we are looking at figures around 99.9% accuracy - there is still that 0.1% of tests, or whatever, that will throw up false positives...."

0.1% False Positives you say? Then EXPLAIN THIS!

You say the False Positive failure rate of HIV tests is 0.1% and the UK Parliamentary group on AIDS says that THE PERCENTAGE OF UK CITIZENS INFECTED BY HIV IS ALSO THAT VERY SAME 0.1%, and I quote the words from their report:

"In the UK, where prevalence of HIV is approximately 0.1%"

These very words by the UK Parliament Group on Aids are found here:

http://data.unaids.org/publications/External-Documents-Restored/ukreport0701_en.pdf

How could it be, Timmy, that the number of people diagnosed as being hiv positive in the UK is the EXACT NUMBER that you say are the percentage of test results that are false positive?

The answer is clear, those who were diagnosed as HIV positive in the UK, are the very same 0.1% FALSE POSITIVE FAILURES that you yourself admit are from THE HIV TESTS THEMSELVES!

It is right there in your own math, Timmy Boy: Rather clear that all UK hiv diagnosed individuals ALL got FALSE POSITIVE.

The tests themselves create 0.1% false positive results, and is exactly the same percentage of those who took hiv tests and had positive diagnosed as hiv results right there in the UK.

Therefore ALL of the 0.1% positive results could ONLY be that very same 0.1% FALSE POSITIVE FAILURE RATE of the lousy tests.

Is there some part of that you still do not yet understand, Timmy Boy? What part of 0.1%=0.1% do you not yet understand?

Pssst, Timmy.... 0.1% equals 0.1%!

Michael

Pssst, Charles,

considering all hiv researchers readily admit that there is yet no mechanism found, and therefore no proof as of yet, whereby the supposed hiv infection kills any T-cells.

So perhaps you would like to share your own theory of aids with all the world, since there is no evidence as of yet for the current theory.

And that is kind of astounding when you consider the hundreds of billions of pounds and dollars that have already been thrown down this rat hole.

Love and Kisses,
Michael

Joe Stokely

thanks Michael, Clark and Elizabeth. Excellent posts and insight. TO ALL OF THE PHARMA PUSHERS THAT ARE STILL DANCING ON THE GRAVE OF CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: LET HER REST IN PEACE. SHE IS DEAD AND IS DEEPLY MISSED AND CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THE TRUTH ABOUT AIDS. YOU ARE USING HER DEATH TO FURTHER ADVANCE YOUR FALSE BELIEF SYSTEM. PEOPLE DIE EVERY DAY. THE TRUTH DOES NOT CHANGE DUE TO A FLAW IN YOUR LOGIC OR HOW MANY TIMES YOU POST A LIE.

Truth seekers are going to look past your words on these blogs and look at both sides logically and in depth. They are going to look all of our motivations and intelligence to decide which is true and which is false. The ones that appeal to the medical authorities without knowing that there is an alternative view are the ones that get deceived. We were there and we know both sides.

If you are someone that is new to this argument, take your time and look at both sides. If you already have been told what the medical establishment teaches, then I would start at with Rethinking AIDS, Virus myth and the Perth Group to learn more about the other side of the story that the medical establishment does not tell you about. Use your own logic and make your own independent decisions.

The truth is not dependent upon how many people believe it or not, the truth is the truth.

jonny

www.askdeblasiowhy.com - full of classic denalist garbage. Its another depressing copy and paste job that regurgitates the same propaganda that's common to all these websites. At least their are consistent.

@Michael You think quoting an article from the Times of India is going persuade anyone of anything. This debate is losing any semblance of sanity.

As your Messiah, the holy Father on Denialism said recently, "The whole dissident idea attracts a lot of crazies. And then all of a sudden, without realizing it, you've become one of them." Peter Duesberg, 2009.

Hugh Parker

This film really isn't an unbiased look at the AIDS "debate". There really isn't a debate in the medical community - all the available research overwhelmingly supports the effectiveness of anti-retrovirals against AIDS.

I hope the panel at your screening is a fair representation of the AIDS-research community.

Fortis

Hmmmm... So how many "HIV does not cause AIDS" proponents would like the testing of the UK's blood supply for HIV to stop? Another poster has asked a question along these lines, but I haven't seen any response yet. After all, given the harsh economic climate, we shouldn't be wasting money on this if it doesn't do anything. Perhaps The Spectator will be launching a campaign along these lines?

By the way, thank you to all those who are writing phrases in capital letters. It is a very useful filter.

TheBiologista

All the usual canards are out in force. No known mechanism by which HIV might cause AIDS? Seriously? The virus kills T cells. That's very easy to demonstrate. T cells go in a flask and get HIV thrown in with them or get left alone. Guess which T cells die faster every time? Throw in some HIV positive patients' cytotoxic T-cells and the T helper cells die even faster. We know full well what happens when a person's T cells die. Their adaptive response collapses. Any infection not blocked by the innate immune system has a free pass. Funnily enough, it looks a lot like AIDS when that happens. This is science, but not rocket science.

We're expected to believe that we have not isolated HIV but somehow we have electron microscope pictures of the virus and a fully sequenced genome. HIV was isolated (directly) from a human in 1983 and many times since. If this is not the same virus we all call HIV, then why do the antibodies that recognise that first 1983 isolate also recognise all of the subsequent unconnected HIV isolates, those virus particles we have directly looked at and split open and sequenced? Antibody cross reactivity happens, non-specific binding happens. But we know what those phenomena look like and we're not morons.

And then we get stuff like "reminds me of revolutionary X who was also treated with scepticism/was dismissed but he was right in the end ergo I must be right". Scepticism is appropriate whether the revolutionary is right or wrong, because more often they're wrong. If we changed the consensus in response to every tenuous but far reaching claim, we'd be going in circles. The history books are just full of the minority who were right, and they were shown to be right not by some pretence of open mindedness, but by standing up to the rigours of scepticism.

Or to put it in Carl Sagan's words "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

PG

We have noticed with interest that Ben
Goldacre and Richard Wilson have been challenging Fraser Nelson to a debate.

According to Wilson and Goldacre, Fraser is ignorant of the facts. Wilson and Goldacre themselves are hardly HIV experts, so we are wondering what purpose such a debate would serve?

It would seem a better ideas if Wilson and Goldacre oculd be persuaded to debate the Perth Group.

We realise that this might not be a fair match-up, so we encourage Wilson and Goldacre to bring along an HIV expert of their own choosing.

Yours sincerely

PG

BLBS

Here is an entire free access journal supplement containing several studies comparing mortality among untreated HIV infected people to those without HIV infection. Please read it.

http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/toc/2007/11006

"As of March 2006, among 228 seroconverters, 56 (24.6%) were alive, 171 (75.0%) had died and one (0.4%) had undetermined status. Among 255 HIV-seronegative individuals at baseline, 15 (5.9%) had died. The median time from HIV seroconversion to death was 7.8 years. The median time to AIDS death was 8.4 years. The median times from seroconversion to clinical AIDS and a CD4 cell count less than 200 cells/μl were 7.2 years and 6.5 years, respectively."

"We recruited 240 HIV incident cases, 108 prevalent cases and 257 HIV-negative controls. Crude mortality rates were 70.0 per 1000 person-years in HIV-positive, and 12.1 per 1000 person-years in HIV-negative individuals. The median time from seroconversion to death was 9.0 years (N = 240) and 6.2 years to a CD4 cell count less than 200 cells/μl or WHO stage 4 (N = 229)."

Fragmeister

Michael's weird post earlier doesn't make sense. Mathematically 0.1% = 0.1% but it does not follow that 0.1% false positives equals 0.1% of the population infected with HIV. For this to happen, everyone in the entire country would have to have been tested, with 99.9% found uninfected and 0.1% infected. Now, if 0.1% is the false positive rate, we may expect an equal number of false negatives. Still, I haven''t been tested for HIV (t my knowledge), nor has my wife, step-daughter, father, mother, brother, sister-in-law...

I could go on. Sadly, without a full command of the evidence, AIDS/climate change/whatever denialists flounder around when confronted by simple logical arguments based on scientific evidence.

Our ideas about HIV/AIDS might be wrong, but the comments of those who are denying it now are not those who are seeking the truth but those who would wish to run away from it.

BLBS

@PG: Why would any expert on HIV want to "debate" with people who have no expertise at all?

Judge Sulan on "The Perth Group," after they tried to argue in his court that HIV doesn't exist:

"Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos has no formal qualifications in medicine, biology, virology, immunology, epidemiology or any other medical disciplines. She has never treated or been directly involved in clinical trials of any kind relating to any disease. Her duties at the Royal Perth Hospital are to test people for sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation.

Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos claims that she conducts research in the area of HIV/AIDS in her private time. It became clear that, when she spoke about research, she meant reading various medical papers about the research of others. Her experience with the HIV virus and with AIDS is limited to reading and critiquing the work of researchers involved in various studies. She purports to have expertise to speak on the subject of virology, epidemiology, electron microscopy, biology and immunology. She has no practical experience in any of these areas. She has no formal qualifications in these disciplines.

The evidence given by Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos about the Perth group demonstrates that she is promoting a cause. She is not independent. She is motivated to create a debate about her theory. The Perth Group will use whatever means available to promote that debate, including encouragement of persons such as the applicant, to promote their theories in courts of law.

Dr Turner's knowledge of the subject matter is limited to reading. He has no formal qualifications to give expert opinions about the virus. He has no practical experience in the treatment of viral diseases. He has no practical experience in the disciplines of virology, immunology or epidemiology.

His opinions are based on reading scientific literature, studying of scientific literature, and spending a considerable amount of time thinking.

I conclude that Dr Turner is not qualified to advance expert opinion about virus isolation, antibody tests, viral load tests, or sexual transmission of the virus. His knowledge of these subjects is limited to having read a number of publications. He relies entirely on his interpretation of various studies in the specialised disciplines of virology, epidemiology, microbiology, immunology, pathology or infectious diseases, in none of which he has qualifications beyond his medical degree. He has no practical experience, and has performed no research which has been published."

Rob Hunter

Speaking as someone who lost six friends before ARVs became available and saw three other friends, at death's door, improve hugely (and remain here today)... I find the crazies not simply stupid, but dangerous and deeply offensive.
And shame, shame on the Spectator for giving the slightest support to these dangerous people. Fraser Nelson, you have blood on your hands. I hope you can live with that.
PS: I cancelled my subscription at the newsagent this morning. I hope many others do likewise.

John Moore

I'm one of the scientists (the legitimate ones) that Leung deceived into appearing in this shoddy film. He used Sasha Baron Cohen-style tactics to sit in our offices and disguise his true agenda - an "honest investigation"? Yeah, right..... Leung is an AIDS denialist, pure and unadulterated. And his multi-million dollar and its promotional budget was paid for by a few wealthy AIDS denialist backers that Leung consistently refuses to identify (so much for full and frank disclosure of funding sources..... expected of and honored by AIDS scientists, but ignored by those who criticize them.

The film itself is deliberately edited to make AIDS scientists look bad, and to create controversy where none lies. And of course Leung's friends are made to look wise and thoughtful, honest questioners of the truth, when the reality is very, very different. Like I say, it's Sasha Baron Cohen in action...... But of course this film is no comedy intended to entertain; its effect will be to cause yet more people to become infected with HIV and die of AIDS.

There's much material on the AIDS denialists, who they are and what they do, posted on the AIDS Truth website. Read it and weep that such crazy and evil people can still influence others to make poor choices with their lives. And pay particular attention to the pages on "The denialists who died of AIDS".

Ben Goldacre has an outstanding article on the film, today, at his Bad Science site.

CWBPI

@BLBS...

Until you (or ANYONE else) prove that 1) HIV exists, 2) attacks and 3) causes AIDS, the debate has more to do with your theology (blind faith) than science. You attack House of Numbers because the documentary exposes the confused AIDS theocracy for what it is.

Many taxpayers wonder why they spend billions of dollars each year to fight something that has never been proven to be dangerous. Shouldn’t we ask why Lindsay Nagel (seen in House of Numbers) was healthy before she received the HIV test, why she got sick when she started the AIDS drugs and how she immediately got better when she stopped taking the drugs?

Shouldn’t we ask why clinicians who said she didn’t have more than a few months of life as a toddler is today and happy and healthy woman without HIV drugs? Why are gay men and scientists so terrified of Lindsay? Is it because she proves that the tests mean nothing and that so-called HIV+ people are unnecessarily killing themselves with these drugs?

As an unproven ASSUMPTION, BLBS’s argument is purely political. Men who inhale amyl nitrate, ingest crystal meth and use antibiotics to protect themselves from the parasites and diseases they catch from other gay men don’t want to admit that their behavior has ANYTHING to do with their subsequent illnesses. For them, it’s easier to blame a harmless retrovirus than their own self-destructive behavior. And since those who suggest the obvious will be attacked as homophobes, it’s often safer socially to accept the unproven than to admit the obvious.

As for a scientific debate, we’ve waited twenty years for SOMEONE to reply to Peter Duesberg’s unanswered questions regarding HIV causation in the National Academy of Sciences:

http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/Duesberg1988.pdf

Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to respond in PNAS, AIDS theologians and their gay disciples have used blogs, threats and libel to defend their theology.

House of Numbers terrifies those theologians because Brent Leung has produced a film that allows those high priests of AIDS to indict themselves.

CWBPI

@TheBiologista:

Please post a link to the peer reviewed report to support your claim that HIV mixed with T-Cells kills T-Cells. I haven't seen that report and you haven't produced it. Please do so that your statement means something. After all, HIV isn't a religion, is it? Does it require faith, like Global Warming?

Grace

@John Moore,

What are you waiting for? Why dont you sue this film maker if your allegations are true? You should be able to take them to court or no?
Is that not the only way to end this madness and maybe the movie will be banned?

Vanini

I'm a retired doctor but was never involved in treating people for AIDS and so have no very obvious axe to grind, apart from the general medical-scientific one of preferring claims to be supported by good evidence. However, several of my drug-injecting patients were HIV positive. In the 1980s and early 1990s, many of them suffered and/or died from disorders that were previously almost unknown in people who were not HIV positive. In the early 1980s, a young gay doctor at my hospital died suddenly from one of those conditions - pneumocystis pneumonia - before he knew what had hit him and without even knowing he was HIV positive. On the other hand, one of my addict patients became HIV positive in the mid-1980s but needed no treatment for over 10 years. In other words, it takes all sorts to make a world. (Including, as some of the responses above demonstrate, credulous and ignorant devotees of conspiracy theories. They are often aided and encouraged by some disgracefully un-professional journalists, who wouldn't recognise a null hypothesis if they were strangled with one, as they deserve to be.)

Since effective anti-virals appeared in the mid-1990s, HIV-positive patients in Britain - even if, like many injecting drug-users, they are not in good health - now rarely die from HIV-related illnesses and are likely to survive to collect their old-age pensions. People with AIDS who took early retirement in the early 1990s on health grounds find to their pleasant surprise that in 2009, they have the time, money and health to enjoy their existing hobbies or to acquire new ones. The special wards for AIDS patients have mostly closed or lost many of their beds and the special AIDS hospices no longer exist because there is no need for them. This hardly sounds like a failure of treatment based on the premise that AIDS is caused primarily by a virus - HIV - and that in general, HIV is at least currently sensitive to the anti-viral drugs that are the main medical treatment, pending the hoped-for development of an effective vaccine.

As to the very important non-medical aspects of AIDS prevention, I strongly recommend Elizabeth Pisani's 'The Wisdom of Whores', which was enthusiastically reviewed in The Spectator about a year ago. (Maybe Fraser Nelson doesn't read his own journal's review section.) She has important things to say about the damage that political correctness has done to prevention programmes, noting for example that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS is commoner among richer rather than poorer men. It is true that she used to be a journalist (and perhaps still is) but she later took a degree in epidemiology and spent several years interviewing high-risk groups and number-crunching in third-world countries. I have never met her but rather doubt that she would approve of the publicity that The Spectator is giving to this film. Unlike most journalists, who rarely admit their mistakes unless forced to, the editor of The Humanist has bravely admitted that he was misled. We need more journalists with that sort of courage.

Michael

Dear sweet and not overly bright Fragmeister,

The UK Parliamentary Group derived their number of an estimated 0.1% presumably infected UK citizens by extrapolating the results of hiv testing percentages across the entire population.

Therefore, yes indeed, the tests are showing 0.1% HIV positives, which is of course, directly equivalent to the false positive rate of the tests, which is of course, directly equivalent to The Group's HIV infection UK infection rate.

They didn't need to test you or your daughter or your grandma. They only needed to extrapolate the results from the testing already done, bright boy.

One more time, just so you understand basic math: 0.1% equals 0.1%.

PG

BLBS,

"@PG: Why would any expert on HIV want to "debate" with people who have no expertise at all?"

If no HIV expert is willing to come forward, Richard Wilson and Ben Goldacre are welcome to try on their own.

So far they even needed a stand-in, you, to reply to the invitation.

We already know that John Moore, who qualifies as an HIV expert in spite of his many failures to develop anti-HIV microbicides, doesn't believe it is wise to debate us.

Interestingly, in at least two cases, the nonoxynol-9 gel and a cellulose-sulfate gel, the microbicides are strongly suspected of having increased the risk of testing HIV positive. Since John Moore believes that HIV is a deadly pathogen, this means that those researchers who conducted such dangerous and premature experiments on humans are
murderers.

We are also certain that John Moore does not wish to discuss the latest RV144 HIV vaccine scam. As John Moore himself pointed put along with more than 20 other HIV experts in a 2004 article, there was no scientific justification for this study. Human experimentation without scientific justification are in breach of the Nuremberg Code.

Maybe it was because the implicated actors, Anthony Fauci's NIAID and the US military, were aware of the unethical nature of their grand human experiment that they decided to publish misleading information about the trial outcome.

If, Vanini, the person who wrote with an admirably straight face that he is a "retired doctor with no axe to grind", would care to identify himself with full name and affiliation, we will be happy to direct him to the evidence he feels is lacking for the Perth Group's position on HIV and AIDS.

Sadun Kal

BLBS wrote:

"@PG: Why would any expert on HIV want to "debate" with people who have no expertise at all?"

Even if you were to falsely assume that;

-The judge Sulan knew all there is to know about how science should ideally be done and the statement you quoted is absolutely accurate,

-It is impossible for a person without the "right" credentials to discover any mistakes by "experts", because nobody can ever make more accurate judgments than the "experts",

-Never in history have "experts" been wrong whereas "non-experts" were right,

-Science is the process of choosing whose theory is more probable based on an examination of the person's reputation/degree/authority/power etc. and not on an examination of the scientific evidence and arguments,

-One needs a degree in Theology and years of practical experience with believing in God to earn the right to criticize religious beliefs,

...don't you think it would still make sense to publicly debate the Perth Group just to prevent them from causing further damage with their dangerous ideas?

And if they're indeed so poor at what they do, which should logically be the case since they supposedly have "no expertise at all", then wouldn't the task of debunking and embarrassing the Perth Group be extremely easy for all the "real experts" on this planet?

Why the hesitation? It's been 20 years now. Why not just get it over with by simply answering all of PG's allegedly pseudoscientific arguments and bury them into the ground? Is the comfort of the precious experts more important than saving the lives of the people who're allegedly misguided by the PG? Isn't this a matter of national security?

Sadun Kal

And if the experts' precious time is spent better on things other than saving innocent people's lives, then maybe the non-experts, like Ben Goldacre or Richard Wilson, should really debate the Perth Group.

Or are they also too close to being experts..? ...with one of them being too good at spotting "Bad Science" and the other being too good at "Not Getting Fooled"..? Would it also be a waste of time for them to correct the dangerous false assertions of the Perth Group?

Dan Jones

@ John Moore.

As someone who has knows friends effected by this and someone who has been tracking the huge success of this GREAT film I ask you to lay it all out on the table here and now.

JOHN MOORE, State for the record for everyone to see what exactly Mr. Leung took out of context in your interview. Right now. I see you write the same material over and over again, but never have you once stated what was taken out of context. SO RIGHT NOW JOHN MOORE. Tell us.

For those that did not see it, here is What Mr. Leung wrote in Huffington Post.

3. Mr. DeLorenzo writes, "Many prominent scientists were interviewed for this movie -- and quoted severely out of context." I would ask Mr. DeLorenzo to please state specifically for the record what was "severely taken out of context" --
especially since he has yet to view the film. A blogger published in a credible news outlet such as the Huffington Post should have a detailed list of examples when making accusations like this. I would also welcome any scientists (especially John P. Moore who continues to assert claims against me) in the film who makes such grievances to submit what specifically they believe to be out of context and why.

What is amazing is John Moore doesn't even address Montagnier.

John says the test is accurate. Great, say these grand statements, but frankly, it doesn't take away from the complete opposite message John's friends give in the film.

Also, JOHN MOORE states we still don't know how HIV causes Immune Deficiency. He says it in the film. If you don't know John after 28 years, maybe you are wrong. Did you even consider that? Oh yes, I forgot. HIV is special and we have only been studying it for a short time. We still have much to learn, but we definitely know it is the cause. Whatever. That is not a scientific answer, yet that's what you say.

The actions of John Moore and others on this page are comedic. If you have seen the film nothing they say on this page or in the ranting and raving or on the crap site AIDSLies.org (I mean AIDSTruth) really addresses the admissions of the main stream scientists. That is the real issue here.

Here is Nancy Padian from the film admitting HIV is the hardest virus to transmit, along with admitting her study had no sexual transmission.

http://reducetheburden.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nancy_padian-lg.jpg

I would like to quote the LA TIMES Article, "Leung serves as the movie's on-camera narrator and conscience, but, best efforts aside, the filmmaker's lack of screen presence undercuts the energy provided by his impressive range of interviewees, whose contradictory positions on HIV/AIDS become the project's raison d'être. There's no denying, however, the value of exploring such game-changing topics as how HIV-infection numbers are cooked for monetary and political gain; how the effects of global poverty may have led to so many AIDS-related deaths; how such widely used AIDS drugs as AZT have, themselves, often proved fatal; and whether HIV really exists."

I would have to say my favorite is that Casper character who said on the Guardian that it was NOT a Denialist Film, that is was a service to Journalism. That was his first unadulterated impression before AIDS Inc. got into him and then, oh Casper changed his mind. Did he personally interview the people Mr. Leung talked to? NO!

Casper first high regard for the film is what counts. It was not tainted by politics.

REMEMBER THAT AND REMEMBER THIS JOHN MOORE. THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR YOU AND AIDS. IT WILL ALL END SOON.

I think John Moore should get his pharma sponsors to pay his first class flight to London to debate.

Also, why is John the only one vocalizing an opinion. None of the other interviewees engage in debate. Why are you the chosen one? Just a question.

Last I will finish with two main points.
1] There is no Test for HIV
2]There is no HIV

Dan Jones

I just read two amazing pieces of feedback about the film from their website I wanted to share. They appear to be college students and they get the film.

1]I just wanted to say thanks so much for not only doing this film but having it screened at Full Sail. When leaving the auditorium, I had so many thoughts and questions/concerns than I ever have before. Knowing that a main goal is to shed new light and conversation on the topic, I just wanted you to know, for me, it did just that. There are many misconceived notions about this topic and people should be more educated on the topic. I was hesitant at first curious what the film was going to go over but was so happy I came to see it. It opened my eyes to things going on around me that maybe I was a little naive about previously. It truly is sad to know we've given so much money (millions...not knowing where it's going) and there hasn't been seemingly any advancements. It's sheer tragedy that egos can get in the way of what is really important when trying to get to the bottome of HIV/AIDS, and trying to find answers. I think your film gives amazing insight to where things are right now and with that perspective, I am angered, happy that people get to know it isn't all figured out but can try to find more answers, and eager to learn as much as I can. So, thank you for providing new insight on something everyone should not only see but become more educated on themselves. A wonderful film that I hope keeps getting the positive feedback it so deserves!!!!u7dk

2.My name is John Whoriskey. I was at the viewing tonight (10/10/09) at Full Sail University. First off I want to say that I immensely enjoyed the film. It truly allows you to question so many things about HIV and AIDS on a completely new level. I have always and will always be someone who has trouble believing everything that is told to me. I think that one of the doctors summed it up perfectly when he said that when there is a precedent set it is extremely difficult to get people to believe anything other than what has been told to them initially. Therefor this films ability to question such an intricate and controversial subject truly speak to me. I recently was researching the origins of AIDS on the internet and it seems clear that there are many different types of hypotheses however no one can truly come up with a definitive answer. When I heard this film was going to be shown at school I was nervous that I might not get a seat in the auditorium. I feel that this is a topic that everyone should research and want to learn more about. There certainly is more to it than the U.S. government and the governments of the world as well as the WHO are telling us. This also alludes to even broader subjects such as whether or not people should be so trusting of medicine in general. For example in a time like this there are far too many people that have jumped on the bandwagon of the swine flu hysteria. The numbers have been over exaggerated and cause mass panic in people in order to push for people to receive the vaccine shots that have been completely rushed in the first place. The same thing happened in 1976. All I have to say is history repeats itself.

John Moore will soon be gone and the youth will come in and set the record straight.

Also, look at all the awards. I guess there are just to many dumb people John Moore? I mean, how come they are playing all over the world?

Fortis

Still wanting to know who would like to see a complete halt to the UK's testing of the blood supply for HIV. Come on, if HIV doesn't cause AIDS, then this could be a great cost saving measure.

PG

"And if the experts' precious time is spent better on things other than saving innocent people's lives, then maybe the non-experts, like Ben Goldacre or Richard Wilson, should really debate the Perth Group.

Or are they also too close to being experts..? ...with one of them being too good at spotting "Bad Science" and the other being too good at "Not Getting Fooled"..? Would it also be a waste of time for them to correct the dangerous false assertions of the Perth Group?"

Sadunkal,

The reason why we suggested that Richard Wilson and Ben Goldacre could bring along their own HIV expert is because it is obvious that AIDStruth.org members provide them with their talking points.

To be honest, we have little interest in Mr. Wilson at present, since he has been exposed several times as a complete ignoramus. It is the incestuous relationship between Mr. Goldacre and AIDStruth.com that might interest some.

Between September 12 and October 24, Mr. Goldacre has written blogs on "AIDS denialism" no less than 3 times, two of which had House of Numbers as subject. This is in addition to guest appearances on blogs such as this and various other things we might not have noticed.

In return for his participation in the orchestrated AIDStruth campaigns to quell dissent, Mr. Goldacre's writings are immediately linked or reproduced on AIDStruth.org and the related denyingaids site, hosted by Seth Kalichman, another HIV non-expert with close ties to AIDStruth.org.

Mr. Goldacre claims to expose bad science, but to anyone reading his blogs on "AIDS denialism" it becomes immediately clear that he is not engaging with the science. His purpose in each case is to "lean" on those who dare host such a debate.

Among his targets are Fraser Nelson, Caspar Melville and those outlets that presume to screen Leung's movie or publish dissident viewpoints. We repeat, this is a campaign orchestrated by AIDstruth activists, with the aim to suppress and intimidate anyone with a visible profile who does not toe the line. That is why Mr. Nelson got "challenged" by Wilson and Goldacre.

Among all Mr. Goldacre's words on House of Numbers we find a single remotely scientific argument. The one point he repeatedly brings up is that one of the drug-free "denialists" featured in the movie is dead. This happens to be the favourite topic of AIDStruth co-founder John Moore as well, who particularly recommends his "Dead Denialists" feature on a website that would like to claims that it present the scientific evidence for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

Unscientific slander of people, living or dead, is thus the framing and level of debate Mr. Nelson can expect if he accepts Mr. Goldacre's challenge.

Revealingly, Mr. Goldacre claims in another blog dated September 12 to have read and analysed Peter Duesberg's latest scientific paper (a paper we don't agree with for various reasons). Here is Mr. Goldacre's analysis:

"To say a peer reviewer might have spotted the flaws in their paper – which had already been rejected by the Journal of Aids – is an understatement. My favourite part is the whole page they devote to arguing that there cannot be lots of people dying of Aids in South Africa because the population of the country has grown in the past few years.
We might expect anyone to spot such poor reasoning but they also misrepresent landmark papers from the literature on Aids research. Rasnick and Duesberg discuss antiretroviral drugs that have side-effects but which have stopped Aids being a death sentence, and attack the notion their benefits outweigh the toxicity: "contrary to these claims", they say, "hundreds of American and British researchers jointly published a collaborative analysis in The Lancet in 2006, concluding treatment of Aids patients with anti-viral drugs has 'not "translated into a decrease in mortality"' That is a simple, flat, unambiguous misrepresentation of the Lancet paper to which they refer."

This is what appeared on AIDStruth 3 days previously on September 9:

"That Duesberg’s paper was not properly reviewed by experts is painfully obvious, as neither facts nor logic are allowed to temper the authors’ denialist speculations and opinions. For example, they argue that AIDS is not a problem in Africa because the total population of Africa has increased during the AIDS era. One could as easily conclude that cancers are never fatal, since the population of California has increased despite the presence of these diseases. Duesberg et al. also say antiretroviral medicines have not reduced AIDS mortality, an obvious lie since these drugs have drastically lowered mortality. Worse, Duesberg et al. say they derived this idea from a scientific article. In fact, the article they cite states nothing of the sort. . . "

Goldacre's "analysis" is merely a summary of AIDStruth's talking points. He even repeats AIDstruth's misrepresentation of Duesberg's arguments.

Duesberg does not argue that an increasing South African population is evidence that HIV is harmless. He argues that, contrary to all predictions, there has been no visible impact from the supposed HIV epidemic on the rate of population increase.

Those are two very different arguments, and it would be impossible for an unbiased and science literate person reading for himself to miss it.

Food4Thought

@John Moore and AIDS Inc.

You say the Producer, Brent Leung had millions to wage this battle with you. Let's turn the table. You have tens of billions to spread what you want as truth and the bias of journals.

Recent history has shown that because you have money and a printing press does not give you truth, It give you the ability to wage complete war and control on information.

This is the battle we have here. An information war and John Moore and his people are so scared about this little film, they will do whatever they need do you never hear the truth the comes from it.

BLBS

Since it might not be obvious just from the thread, bear in mind that both members of "the Perth Group" (PG) are interviewed in House of Numbers and treated as credible sources of information on the subject of HIV.

Carry on...

TheBiologista

@CWBPI

"Please post a link to the peer reviewed report to support your claim that HIV mixed with T-Cells kills T-Cells. I haven't seen that report and you haven't produced it. Please do so that your statement means something. After all, HIV isn't a religion, is it? Does it require faith, like Global Warming?"

Well, it's not exactly standard practice to append a references section to an internet comment but okay.

Gandhi et al. (1998) showed direct killing of T helper cells by HIV in vitro: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2212217/

Stewart et al. (1997) showed that one of the components of HIV directly induces programmed cell death in T cells: http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/reprint/71/7/5579

Most readers will be none the wiser for my posting those links. But does my statement "mean something" now? Don't know what you're on about with regard to religion. Our knowledge regarding HIV and AIDS is, like climate, knowledge derived from observation and experimentation. You know, objectively verifiable evidence. Religions rely on on personal, non-verifiable, non-reproducible knowledge. Which to my mind is not knowledge and not comparable at all to what we know about climate change and AIDS.

CWBPI

Like ALL other documents, those you have posted also ASSUME HIV exists, attacks cells and causes AIDS. Where did the HIV sample they used come from? Waws it a lab strain collect the same way that Gallo polluted his strains with monkey blood? Why is it that only your own alchemists can reproduce such tests? Why should I believe scientists who are employed by an industry that has paid more than a trillion dollars for criminal and civil complaints?

Your theological support for Global Warming is also telling - Ian Plimer's book Heaven and Earth provides more than 2200 peer-reviewed reports that cover the past 4 billion years of weather on Earth, instead of All Gore's 70 years. Despite proof that the oceans have cooled during the past 11 years, the High Priest of Global Warming still claims the planet warmed. The fact that water conducts heat more efficiently than the asphalt parking lots where Al Gore detected heat requires a huge leap of FAITH to believe what at least 65% of all Americans no longer accept. The difference between the terror of HIV and CO2 is that most people know more about the weather than the alchemy of virology – and that there are no hysterical gay activists parroting the theology.

During the past 30 years, the pharmaceutical industry has paid more than $1 trillion in lawsuit settlements and judgments for criminal behavior, preventable injuries and death. If we knew who you were we would see that you’re paid by those same companies - which is why you haven’t share your name.

Without highly paid pharmaceutical streetwalkers like you, AIDS would have been cured years ago - the same way and reasons that Galileo and Luther cured the Catholic Church. AIDS is nothing but a religion, the drugs a pharmaceutical Eucharist and the illness and death those drugs cause an opportunity for AIDS believers to suffer and die JUST LIKE JESUS.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the talented arguments of your pathetic cause.

TheBiologista

@CWBPI

You asked for references regarding the specific point I made about HIV killing T cells and I provided references. If you'd like to refute them then by all means do so- with evidence. All materials used are described in full in the "Methods" section of each paper, as is standard for peer-reviewed research. So your questions regarding the origins of the materials used are a little puzzling- did you not read the papers? The affiliations of the researchers are also included as are details of funding for the research. Is there evidence of a conflict of interest in either case?

It's not just industry researchers who have produced these results- they've been repeatedly confirmed by independently funded researchers. That's how scientific consensus is reached- through independently verification.

Now, you've also pointed out that the pharmaceuticals industry has been up to all sorts of underhand, dishonest and even dangerous activity. I agree, they have. They're scumbags, rather like the oil and tobacco industries. But they're also subject to the same demands of validation as the rest of the scientific community. This does not mean that we can trust them, after all they like to do things such as only send positive clinical trial results for peer review. But we in the scientific community are wise to their game. We attack them whenever we see bad science performed. Really, the sort of conspiracy you suggest would be next to impossible to maintain. It would be trivially easy for any virologist or immunologist to test the claims made about the basic science behind HIV and AIDS.

Finally, you suggest that I am being paid by the industry to write this stuff. Well if that is the case you should still be able to refute my claims with evidence. My hypothetical motives or funding don't give me some special powers and I haven't laid any claims to particular authority. As it happens I'm not being paid by anyone right now. I'm between a PhD and my first job in immunology. I'm sure it makes you feel better to assume that people who disagree with you are doing so simply because they're being paid to- but the reality is that there are millions of scientists who disagree with you simply because they are convinced by good evidence. And millions more non-scientists who are similarly convinced. You're not going to get very far convincing us otherwise if your default assumptions is that we are all somehow in the pocket of Big Pharma.

JTD

CWPBI says that Ryan White's mother killed her son with AZT! OUTRAGEOUS!
If Clark Baker can make that statement, Joe Stokely, then why is it such a stretch to believe that Christine Maggiore killed her own daughter, EJ, with her denialist beliefs? It's logical. That is why your people, Michael, Clark, Elizabeth, can not understand it nor admit it.
JTD

JTD

CWPBI is Clark Baker. Google his name along with LA Times and you'll find what you need to discredit him. If that is not enough, just read what he posts above. Especially where he claims he has 30 years investigation experience. He keeps padding his resume. Not only does his site show 28 years, but 20 of those years was as a motorcycle LA cop. He gave out tickets to speeders and jay walkers. Not much investigations going on there!
Also, he does not have college degree at all, much less in science. His lack of knowledge and experience in science complete discredits him. We do not need to discredit him. He does that himself.
JTD

JTD

Again for CWBPI, Mr. Baker, you ask for proof:
"Until you (or ANYONE else) prove that 1) HIV exists, 2) attacks and 3) causes AIDS"
Even Peter Duesberg himself has proven HIV exists when he tried to claim The Continuum Prize.
For proof of the other two you ask for, why don't you go to PubMed and read the thousands of articles for yourself? Sorry, I know why. Because you are not educated enough to understand those in depth, scientific, peer reviewed papers.
JTD

MacDonald

Ever since Robert Gallo's first "HIV" experiments, HIV scientists have been able to come up with different concoctions that seem to demonstrate HIV cytopathicity in vitro (i.e. in the laboratory away from all the natural immune functions of the body).

There are countless ways of varying in vitro conditions: different cell lines, different kinds of cell stimulation, different kinds of "HIV clones", etc.

Most of these studies are introduced along these lines:

"The mechanism by which HIV-1 induces CD4+ T cell death is not known. A fundamental issue is whether HIV-1 primarily induces direct killing of infected cells or indirectly causes death of uninfected bystander cells. . . "

Since these "fundamental issues" have been compounded rather than resolved in spite of thousands of papers and ingenious theories, Clark Baker and others are indeed right to ask how the various "clones" or "HIV components" relate to HIV and its supposed cell-killing activity in vivo (in the living organism).

Sadun Kal

I hear that the event has been canceled...

http://www.quoteurl.com/1jrik

Matt

Does anyone know if it is the case that the Spectator House of Numbers event has been cancelled? Rumours on twitter. Maybe the Spec realised exactly what sort of "debate" it was getting into. But I am sure CWB etc and the rest will claim big pharma closed it down.

peter laing

The event no longer appears on the Spectator website - here's the google cached version:

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:http://www.spectator.co.uk/shop/events/5402473/spectator-debate-a-world-without-aids.thtml

peter laing

The event has been cancelled! I telephoned to ask if any tickets were still available and was told ‘because some of the experts have pulled out, the panel would be unbalanced, so we’ve cancelled the event.’ Its unlikely the AIDS denialists would have pulled out….

Star Z

Noone ever questioned it but they always have called it a consensus, no evidence no analysis no 1800 science like Koch's postulate. Noos will dare show up to defend this sharade, it is worn very thin and a child can see through the veil that the emporor has no clothes.

MacDonald

Matt,

You're welcome to tell me who, would have the vested interest and power to make somebody pull out of a debate like this.

Ok, let's not kid ourselves; have you ever heard of a debate on HIV/AIDS "AIDS denialism" or whatever being cancelled, includign a movie screening because there were no "denialists" on the panel?

Get real, and get a real name.

Celia Farber

The event was cancelled because the two representatives of the orthodox position cancelled over the weekend. One of them cited a sick relative, the other suddenly realized he had to be in another part of the world on that day.

This last minute vanishing act is a well established hide and seek tradition that the orthodoxy has deployed since 1988, with monstrous consistency. ON a popular TV show on TV Azteca in 2006 the representatives of the orthodox perspective demanded a whole hour to themselves in advance of the "debate" portion, then deserted the show--a live show--before the debate began. The host was reduced to placing a call on his cell phone on LIVE TELEVISION to a health minister who had had a hand in the cancellation. In the end, the host came up with the brilliant idea to place name cards with the vanished guests names on empty chairs for the duration of the show.

These people are deplorable, pitiful, and detestable. They lie, distort, conspire, cheat, debase, attack, and finally--flee like frightened mama's boys in a schoolyard fight they claim the right (always) to win hands down from a high branch in a tree 3 miles away. All that has happened in 23 years is that every possible method of evasion, McCarththyism, censure, intimidation, vandalism, and obfuscation has been perfected and advanced. And still they remain with their backsides firmly planted on the highest of invisible king's horses.

Even the horses want nothing to do with them at this point.

Stand firm Spectator. You have in no way sinned against journalism. This IS journalism.

Dissidence101

As interesting as this all may be, especially those wonderful posts by all the HIV/AIDS believers, one can actually go to a message board that has 175 replys and 12,000 views all about HOUSE OF NUMBERS

http://forums.aidsmythexposed.com/main-forum/5567-house-numbers-most-important-film-our-time.html#post32584

Francis

From what I see there is no actual debate on this issue. An article is published about a movie which raises some questions. BIG DEAL. The media monitors at AIDSTRUTH raise the alarm and alert the dogma drones to respond. The electronic attack commences. We see this time and time again. It is as predictable as the tides. John P MOORE has repeatedly stated that "We do not debate "Denialists", and yet he keeps popping up in these forums along with his "Consensus". The brownshirts at AIDSTRUTH do not respond to actual questions but allude to scientific papers paid for and run by the pharmaceutical giants, it doesn't matter that their other studies weren't published because the results were unfavourable or the study stopped early as they could see where it was heading. The hacks croon about a victory because the advertised debate event was cancelled, only because pressure was applied. Yes Matt you did effectively shut it down, Bravo! I was under the impression that we lived in a civilised and democratic society. We are meant to have the right to speak of what we believe and question that which we don't. None of you TruthBots are fooling anyone anymore, your attacks are personal, hysterical and illogical. Just what is it you have to hide and why are you so scared of what you call a lunatic fringe?

JTD

Celia Farber explaining what "journalism is", is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. This from a woman who admitted in a BookSlut interview that she does not, and I quote "report on facts, but on emotions"! I think Spectator should take journalism lessons from someone who can actually do the research and report on facts. A true journalist gets their facts from many sources, and checks those facts with other sources. Ms. Farber gets ALL her facts from denialist sites.
JTD

BLBS

@Celia Farber

Who were "the two representatives of the orthodox position"? I read that Joe Sonnabend was planning on denouncing the film, which would be consistent with him being the only panelist with actual experience of caring for people with HIV.

Also in that Bookslut interview JTD mentions you say this:

"All I can say is only data speaks.

[Farber begins to read from an Aug. 5 Lancet article, “HIV treatment response and prognosis in Europe and North America in the first decade of highly active antiretroviral therapy: a collaborative analysis” (it looks at 20,000 patients in Europe and North America on cocktail therapy, also known as HAART therapy). “Virological response after starting HAART improved over calendar years, but such improvements has not translated into a decrease in mortality since 1996” (the year these drugs were launched).]

....what I just told you about is a ten-year perspective study. And when they looked over those ten years the utopian dream did not pan out. Their HIV levels are going down, whoop-dee-doo, but they are not living longer. It’s a very strange position to be in. Those of us on the skeptical side have never been more right but we have never been more hated."

But the study you're referring to shows no such thing. There is an explanation of what the study shows on the second page of comments to Ben Goldacre's Guardian article on Peter Duesberg's withdrawn Medical Hypotheses paper. To quote:

"The lack of a "decrease in mortality" that is being referred to in that quote involves a comparison of mortality AFTER JUST ONE YEAR ON TREATMENT among people who started treatment in 95/96 compared to people who started in 2002/3.

Mortality after one year of treatment in 95/96 was 2.2% (27 deaths out of a cohort of 1,232 people) and in 2002/3 it was 1.3% (25 deaths out of a cohort of 1,932 people). This is not a statistically significant difference. BUT IT IS NOT A COMPARISON OF TREATMENT vs. NO TREATMENT."

- I think this is actually an example of what a debate with AIDS denialists looks like: one side pretending studies say things they don't, the other having to painstakingly correct the misrepresentation.

BLBS

I'm curious as to how it is that Celia Farber knows the reasons given by the panelists for canceling.

If The Spectator does have a showing of House of Numbers, I suggest inviting the film's credited writer, Llewellyn Chapman, as I think their words (such as the claim that HIV tests "prove nothing") deserve explanation.

Truthbot

Since all the journals are "owned", but Celia Farber and others still cite them on occasion, I'd like them to advise on how to tell which articles slipped through the net? Is it just the ones where, if you read the abstract really quickly, it looks like it might support a certain hypothesis?

ashley

My comment is about the opening words of the article -

Is it legitimate to discuss the strength of the link between HIV and Aids?

Of course it is not legitimate.

If you become infected with HIV and you are unfortunate enough to remain undiagnosed you will almost certainly die of its result in your body - AIDS (if something else doesn't get you first, of course).

If you had written

Is it legitimate to discuss the variety of ways in which HIV and AIDS have been linked over the last twenty years?

Then I would say yes.

If you had written

Is it legitimate to discuss the complexity of the links between HIV, its treatment, and AIDS?

I would also say yes.

I get the impression that the latter two questions are the ones that are being addressed, either as history or polemic from a variety of standpoints, in the comments here.

Those people who actually deny the existence of HIV or its link to AIDS are definitely a strange and damaged group. It is a great pity that they have been given another chance by your sloppy use of headline to air foolishness.

Ben Goldacres mum

@Ashley

You say: Is it legitimate to discuss the strength of the link between HIV and Aids?

Of course it is not legitimate.

BGM: But you don't give good reason why it is not legitimate. Then you make that sad and tired comment about being infected with HIV. Can you explain to me and the rest of the forum how you know that someone is infected with HIV? Hang on, it's the AIDS test isn't it, uh, I mean the HIV test. Hold on, the test doesn't look for HIV does it?! Doh! Of course it's the antibodies. Wait a minute, the antibodies are not specific to HIV are they, and the tests are not standardised and you have no idea what you are talking about do you?

It's time to kick that ego to the kerb Ashley and go and do your homework from scratch, and I mean really do it. Spend a long time, dig deep and if you can find the evidence that HIV exists and causes disease and you can find evidence how it does it, then get back to us all. Good luck! you're going to need it.

severn

I don't think there is anything that should not be discussed.

What an editor ought to understand, though, is that not every sequence of contradictory statements is a 'discussion' or 'debate'.

Placing current evidence and theory against the tired rehash by the AIDS denialists of some arguments from the early 90s is not a 'discussion'.

Placing current evidence and theory against fantasists like Ian Plimer who simply make things up (or repeat things that other people made up) is not a 'debate'.

The sad thing is, that although this pitting of science against pseudoscience is supposed to be exciting, it's really just the same old sort of stuff I have seen for decades. (I suppose, though, that anything that pretends to be science is going to look interesting to the staff of a political magazine.)

The real debates that go on in science are immeasurably more interesting.

JTD

Ben Goldacres Mum...are you being intentionally dishonest regarding the "antibody tests"? OR do you really not have a clue?
First off, there are TWO HIV tests. The first IS an antibody test. It is a SENSITIVE test, meaning, in lay man terms, that it is geared to a "false positive" if you will. IF the ELISA is poz then there is a CONFIRMATORY test that is SPECIFIC for HIV proteins. NOT antibodies but HIV antigens THEMSELVES! Again, the second test, the Western Blot, is a test that IS SPECIFIC. The two tests together are 99.9% accurate.
The WB test is very labor intensive. It is not a machine test it is a test performed by a highly educated, experienced HUMAN BEING. It is expensive and time consuming and ACCURATE! So stop lying about the testing.
Next thing you know you will start spewing the lies that the ELISA test will show positive on 45 different interfering substances, especially on pregnant women! That is another lie perpetuated by AIDS Denialists. I work in a hospital with an entire wing for pregnant women and I have yet to see even ONE POZ on the ELISA for these pregnant women. Is that a big deal? Yes. Because every woman gets an ELISA test before she gives birth!!
So get your facts straight before you lie to others and perhaps make them believe your lies and not get tested.
JTD

AIDS Truther

@celia farber (and other AIDS denialists).

The reason for the cancellation was that the magazine came to realize that going ahead was socially irresponsible and damaging to public health. This happened because AIDS professionals talked to responsible grown ups and made them aware of the facts.

Another defeat for AIDS denialism, another victory for science, medicine and common sense. This happens so often because it's so easy to make it happen.

Truther

Tom

Concerning the HIV test, I am left wondering how a false positive can be definitively determined. Surely, a mere re-testing with the same diagnositc antibody (ELISA/WB) test cannot be sufficiently conclusive, or can it?
So a PCR should then be performed to establish the presence (or absence) of HIV-specific proteins, right?
A friend of mine tested positive on the first, and negative on the second - so I understand that this would constitute a false positive.

Conversely, a doctor I know has reported to have sent in two identical blood samples to the lab, one for ELISA/WB (for a first diagnosis) and (and identical) one for PCR (labelled for measuring viral load as done with infected patients): the first came back negative, the second sample came back with a viral load of 1400.

Now, have such comparative studies been done or repeated, what did they conclude and have they been published? If not, would any doctor kindly try this to shed some light on the issue? And if that were true, then how could I determine a false positive?

Thank you!

Carolyn Thornley

@Celia Farber
The reason the magazine cancelled the HoN screening and discussion is because AIDS professionals contacted grown ups and made them aware that to support HoN in any way was socially irresponsible and damaging to public health. This didn't take much, as grown ups aren't fooled by AIDS denilists and their film.

So, another defeat for AIDS denialism, as happens all the time. It's just so easy.

And of course Joe Sonnabend was going to denounce HoN. He's on the side of common sense and sound science, and has been for a long time. His views will be made public in an appropriate forum at the proper time.

Truther

Dan Jones

@AIDS Truther

REALLY cause I called the spectator and I have the reason they had to cancel the event. Everyone got the same reason. I guess like HIV you have extraordinary circumstances with special circumstances. Can you provide proof for your statement?

It seems your precious establishment folks refused to debate.

You know what, I would not want to debate either. The film makes AIDS Truthers look like AIDS cover artists. Another victory HA. This great work got so much press and we know you are all afraid. The REAL TRUTH is your days are numbered. Thanks to Brent Leung and his amazing film.

The real AIDS Truth (No virus, no test, and drugs kill) will soon be revealed.

THERE IS NO TEST

@JTD

At the moment I am not going to comment on how dumb you piece about western blots are. I will say this, FIND ME GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS THAT SAY ELISA AND WB IS THE PROTOCOL IN THE UK?

You cannot because it is not. SO that leaves you with two ELISAS.

When you prove to me that WB's are used in the UK and all over Africa and ASIA I will deconstruct the actual WB with International regulations, Test kits literature and FDA material. But one thing at a time lad. You are not every well read, researched, and informed. I have to go slow with you.

ashley

This article and the one by Mr Hodgkinson reviewing the so-called documentary are equally vacuous.

I would like to refer anyone interested in a view of HIV and AIDS to the following website

http://www.avert.org

I found it most helpful with regard to the historical spread of this disease, alongside the changing and multi-faceted reactions to it. It also has an excellent review of the scientific work that has been done in isolating the virus and finding effective pharmaceutical treatments.

Confusion arising from misinformation and ignorance may stem from sincere concerns, but I also wonder whether occasional commentators are at least to some degree malevolent, or find themselves indulging in a form of schadenfreude.

Ben Goldacres mum

@JTD

I was going to responde but 'THERE IS NO TEST' covers what I would have said. So what is your response to them/me?

Before you get all high and mighty, thinking you're clever with stuff about antigens and proteins etc. We have heard this all before, but none of that addresses the fact that the tests, ELISA and Western Blot are not standardised. And aside from all of that the question of isolation remains. BUT, even when you take all of that into account there is still no evidence, NONE that proves the pathogenesis of what is erroneously termed HIV.

Before you start throwing this paper and that paper at me, think 'in vitro' and all the associated problems.

Gus Cairns

"These people are deplorable, pitiful, and detestable."

No I'm not, Celia, I'm a person living with HIV who nearly died but whose life was unequestionably saved by antiretrovirals. Who in other circumstances might have been great campaigners but who died because they believed the lies sustained by people like you.
Who have watched kids in South Africa dying of AIDS, who could have been saved by the drugs I had in my hotel bedroom and who were withheld from them by a president misled by people like you.

Best wishes

Gus

I want Proof

@Carolyn Thornley
Provide proof Sonnabend was going to denounce the film. The film makes statements it can back up.
Lets see you back it up.

Dan Jones

I don't think people realize all the arguments, like the last guy who says the meds saved him. No one is saying they can't help you if used when you are very sick. They are powerful drugs that can kill microbs, viruses, and healthy humans. Problem is if you are healthy, they will cause you to get Immune deficiency, then what? Was it the drugs or the virus. If you are sick and they help you need to then get off them. If you use them forever you will die, virus or not.

HIV Misdiagnosis

As someone who was diagnosed positive and after four years they have yet to find Virus in my blood... I would say there are some serious questions about what we believe and what is known about this alledged illness... This film is vital in coming to real solutions. Encouraging debate... and why is the otherside so unwilling to debate... to me I can only assume it is acknowledgement of guilt... the wrong word and they could blow this whole thing wide open. Currently the only options people who are sick have to stay alive are options whose side effects are often death. I am sorry but liver failure as a side effect is hardly an effecient treatment. Making people believe they are stuck on these drugs for life that not only destroy their quality of life but make them very sick when so many have stopped them and are still doing well after years and years... (of course if they decide to change their lifestyles and take their health seriously) There are women who were AIDS diagnosed at the birth of their children though did not know it... who have had negative children. There are people with little to no risk of transmission giving birth to negative children... unfortunately those previously diagnosed are subject to a serious battle of manipulation and coersion should they decide to risk not taking the drugs... for example which is worse a 1% chance of transmission or a 100% chance of mitochondrial dysfunction due to the drugs? These people often have to get legal representation and fight not to take drugs that are not proven to be safe or truly effective but are widely known to be toxic and dangerous. There are many who have found their positive children were far healthier without the drugs who have had to battle to allow themselves and their children the benefits of good health without them. As a pregnant mother you are told the drugs will make you sick... their are many side effects but not to worry their are more drugs for those. Your pregnancy immediately becomes high risk at the moment you take the drugs, you will be unable to work... and so on... and I have to ask myself how can doing all that to a pregnant mother... be in any way good for her or her child? Persistent Mitochondrial Dysfunction is at the core of many many diseases that can take years to show up... and often do not get linked back to the drugs. We truly must do something. This debate needs to happen!

HIV Misdiagnosis

I must add... in a letter from the Spectator... It was cancelled because they were unable to priovide a balanced panel because the orthodoxy refused to show up... So who are the real cowards? The Professionals who have questions openly willing to debate at the risk of their careers... Or those of the orthodox who truly only show how unprepared they are by not being willing to participate in the debate as they have been for the last 20 years. I have always asked myself as an HIV+ what are they so affraid of? What are they hiding that they are not willing to lay it on the table?

JTD

HIV Misdiagnosis, you say many, mamy "things" disguised as fact, but you provide no proof except your word.
For example, "1% chance of transmission VS. 100% chance of Mitochondrial dysfunction". How about what you wrote about dying from liver provlems? I can tell you from experience, I have been on HIV meds for 15 years and have perfect liver functions and no mitochondrial dysfunction. I bet you do not even know what a mitochondria is/does!
I also have many, many friends on HIV meds longer than myself with no problems.
Provide some data/facts or close your yap!
JTD

HIV Misdiagnosis

Maybe you should look at the study where they put several non-positive people on HAART for 30 days... and all showed mitochondrial DNA damage... I will have to dig up this link... But for any of you out there who truly want to understand the damages and effects of these drugs... Investigate Mitchondrial dysfunction in children exposed to ARVS, Look up ARV's and Mitochondrial Dysfunction... I do know what the mitochondria is and how it works... and if any of you take the time to investigate it yourself... you will see how shocking it is that people are given drugs that slow the mitochondria...as the slowing down of the mitochondria is the tell tale sign of ALL degenerative diseases. That is just one of the many effects of these drugs on the DNA and Mitochondria... I do suggest you read up on it... cause you have only showed me how ignorant you are with your response...

Truthbot

@I want proof.

Here's proof: http://blogs.poz.com/joseph/archives/2009/10/a_new_aids_documanta.html

JTD

Celia Farber has once again proven what a poor "investigative journalist" she is. Above she claims that the two Orthodox panelists are the ones who backed out. However, Sonneband writes here that he did NOT pull out:
http://blogs.poz.com/joseph/archives/2009/10/a_new_aids_documanta.html

As for Miss Diagnosis, can you provide the proof that Africa, Asia and UK do not utilize proper confirmatory tests? I ask because I do know that most of Africa, Asia and the UK do utilize SPECIFIC confirmatory tests INCLUDING Western Blot and Line Immunoassay. I'll provide some proof for you since I ask the same of you.
http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary.aspx?ss=15&doc_id=12376&nbr=6406
JTD

Celia Farber

Whoever Carolyn Thornley is, she can't get facts straight.

Do you, Ms. Thornley, mean to state here and now that The Spectator did not cancel this event because of the sudden withdrawal of two orthodox panelists? Did I SAY one of them was Joe Sonnabend? Can we make a bet? I'm ready to post my evidence, if you are. Have we a deal?

In addition: I have countless hours of tapes from the ever shifting but consistently indignant Joe Sonnabend dating as far back at 1988, when I wrote my first lengthy article about HIS multi-factorial theory of AIDS.

I shall put them all up online and then we'll see whether you still find him to be on the side of the angels. I mean, by the way, interviews that date from 1988 through 2001, if not longer.

After that, he became impossibly sycophantic to the orthodoxy.

He has no integrity. I can produce, from my personal files, a letter written by Joe Sonnabend, at the insistence of the decent and lovely Michael Callen, that Joe correct at least ONE act of cloying treachery, which nearly cost me my job in 1991. A TAG operator had forced Joe to sign a letter claiming he never said the things to me that I quoted in an article, about the origins of the heterosexual AIDS hoax (his word.) He was strong-armed by Spencer Cox at TAG into signing a letter claiming I had falsified his quotes. Joe complied. TAG ferried the letter over to Liz Smith, who reluctantly quoted it, later telling my father she knew she was being had...Major heat came down on me from the investors of SPIN magazine. Callen went crazy, Joe started apologizing to me, before I even knew what he was talking about. (This was at the Amsterdam Alternative AIDS conference in 1992.) Sonnabend had to finally write a second letter, which I have in my possession, admitting he was COERCED into writing that letter, and that the quotes I had attributed to him were 100% accurate. Before this correction was issued, TAG had already sent gorgeous flowers to Liz Smith. As for me, like everybody else under Joe's Bus, I forgave him because he seemed so abashed. I even invited him to my wedding.

But he is a weak, dishonest man without any integrity, who loves the sensation of throwing everybody under the bus.

If anybody wishes to see a copy of the letter I describe here, email me at editor@thetruthbarrier,com

John Hankins

Hi Ben, You're pseudo-badscience days are numbered. I hope you don't have any skeletons in your closet. I am living proof that HIV does not cause AIDS, if HIV even exists at all.

www.iamlivingproof.wordpress.com

Deny that!!

Celia Farber

JTD has once again proven that he can't read. Where did I state that Joe Sonnabend was one of the Disapprovers Of The Film who canceled?

Can't you people stop being so boastful about your censoriousness?

You seek to shut down debate wherever its spirit manifests, because you are horrified at what will become of your self-declared moral superiority when your decades long strangle-hold on the mass mind breaks down. It is that simple and it is quite apparent. Nobody has requested to be controlled or instructed by any of you. Journalism is journalism. It seeks, ideally, to open up, investigate, and resolve distortions that affect people's lives.

Stop telling everybody what journalism is. Stop berating, attacking, demeaning, libeling, bullying, slandering, and censoring.

You've messed up. HIV positive people are the ones driving this revolution. Soon you will have to deal directly with them, when the media ceases to act as your personal body-guard, protecting you from all the very real problems with your paradigm. People are quite clear: There is no shame in this debate. It is necessary and it is happening, whether you like it or not.

BLBS

Celia Farber, like The Perth Group, is interviewed in House of Numbers and treated as a credible source of information on HIV. She is billed onscreen only as an "investigative journalist."

Stefan R.

Concerning the cancelled event Prof. Bauer has published a qoute from the Events Team on his blog:
http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/public-debate-about-leung-film/
...
“I am writing to inform you that, with much regret, the event on “Aids – realism or denial” due to take place on Wednesday 28 October, has been cancelled due to several members of the panel having pulled out at the last minute, leaving us with an unbalanced panel which would not make for a rounded discussion on the film.

The purpose of the event was to have a rational and balanced discussion in an area of science too often characterised by hysteria. House of Numbers is a controversial film and we wanted it scrutinised by leading authorities and to follow its showing with real debate encompassing a wide spectrum of opinion. It has proved very difficult to put together a panel which could do this. We thought we had managed but several last-minute defections have defeated us. We will look at staging this event at a later date with another, more dependable panel.

We apologise to you who signed up to attend, however, we have been left with no option but to cancel.

We will be fully reimbursing your ticket fees today and can confirm that the refund should show in your accounts by the end of the week. We will be in touch should we manage to stage this event in the future. In meantime, we would like to thank you for your support and encourage you to visit our website on www.spectator.co.uk/events to view our forthcoming events which may be of interest.

Yours sincerely

Phoebe Vela
Head of Corporate Affairs and Events

Events
Events Team
Press Holdings Media Group
22 Old Queen Street
London
SW1H 9HP
T – +44 (0)20 7961 0044
F – +44 (0)20 7961 0100
events@pressholdings.com

Truthbot

Celia Farber.

Instead of showing off that you can use a thesaurus, please explain why, as BLBS points out, you said the Lancet article said something it didn't? Is it because you don't understand it, or because you think you can get away with misleading people?

As it happens, lots of Sonnabend's unease was to do with strategies for dealing with HIV and AIDS. There continues to be very lively debate on how best to tackle HIV and AIDS.

Sonnabend figured things out, over time. Let's hope you do too.

John Hankins

I just woke up to see if my post last night was published and immediately noticed that I made a typo using You're instead of Your. By the end of the day late last night, I was exhausted, but I'm sure some orthodox goon like JTD aka MA will take a cheap shot anyway. Oh well, I know who I am and I don't wear masks.

QuestionWhatYouAlreadyKnow

I don't classify myself as either "establishment" or "dissident," however, after testing both HIV+ and HIV- at the SAME TIME – on THREE separate occasions – there is definitely something amiss.

Here is my story:

In July 2007, I went to get tested as I have done every 6 months for the past 12 or so years. I'll never forget when the counselor this time said, "You're preliminary positive." I was in shock. But then she said we needed to do a confirmatory test (Western Blot) to be sure. I didn't even know what that meant, but I felt so helpless I would've done whatever she told me.

Well, she told me to go get tested at another center, because based on my risk factors, it didn't make sense. So I did - the same day.

To my surprise, I tested negative at this other center. But because I was in doubt, I asked them to do the confirmatory test as well. This is where things get really weird.

The next week both test centers said I needed to come in for the confirmatory results. The center that told me I was initially HIV- now told me I was HIV+. The center that told me I was HIV+ now told me I was "indeterminate", and would have to come back for ANOTHER confirmatory test in a month.

To be sure, I waited two months. The test result came back negative. So I had TWO confirmatory tests done – one came back positive and one came back negative. How could two "confirmatory" tests have completely opposite results?

After trying to get my head around what was going on, I did some research and found that not everything is as we're told, and that while ANY test can have false positives, HIV tests are especially notorious for doing so – even the “confirmatory” tests.

While I do not believe either side is 100% correct, I do not believe either side is 100% wrong. People who bash dissidents and their right to question existing dogma, whether well intentioned or not, do a great disservice to those living with HIV/AIDS.

While I know HAART has helped SOME individuals, it has undoubtedly destroyed the lives of those who were never HIV- in the first place, and like myself, likely had a false positive diagnosis. What if I had never gone to two different testing centers?

I shudder to think what my life would have been like had I lived in the 80’s and been given AZT.

Point is, while I do believe that AIDS exists and that if you test HIV+ you are definitely more likely to develop AIDS then an HIV- person, it doesn't occur to the people that there are "many" reasons why (according to the CDC) people can test FALSE HIV+. There are also many people who test HIV+, have never taken antivirals, and have been around since they supposedly discovered HIV.

BLBS

This is a link to an article by Celia Farber in Mothering Magazine, about prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (MTCT):

http://www.mothering.com/azt-roulette-impossible-choices-facing-hiv-positive-women

This is a quote from the article about the ACTG 076 study, which demonstrated the efficacy of AZT in reducing MTCT:

"This despite the fact that criticisms have been made of the design and the conclusions of 076. The study’s authors themselves, when they reported their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 1994 admitted that the efficacy of AZT in reducing maternal transmission of HIV is 'impossible to quantify [absolutely] because of the very small numbers of infected babies [studied].' They also noted that the rate of the HIV transmission in the placebo group was inexplicably high.7"

The number is the citation, which is included at the end:

"7. The New England Journal of Medicine 331, no. 18 (November 3, 1994): 1176-1177."

Note that it even references specific pages in the paper. This is the cited paper in NEJM:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/331/18/1173

The New England Journal of Medicine 331, no. 18 (November 3, 1994) pages: 1173-1180

The only quote I can find that comes even close is:

"It was impossible to identify prognostic factors for HIV transmission (other than treatment) in this interim analysis because of the small number of infected infants in the zidovudine group."

I also can't see any note suggesting that the "rate of the HIV transmission in the placebo group was inexplicably high."

In complete contradiction to what Farber writes, the study does quantify the efficacy of AZT in preventing MTCT, and the reason it couldn't identify prognostic factors associated with transmission is because the intervention was so efficacious.

Perhaps Celia Farber can resolve this apparent distortion.

JTD

Ms. Farber, you are being extremely hypocritical. You are accusing the orthodox of calling people names but YOU, yes, YOU Ms. Farber, in your first post on this thread, began the name calling!
Also, you said that two of the orthodox panelists pulled out and my understanding was that there were two panelists from each view! I just assumed Sonnabend was one of them. It seems you assume that as well with your beligerent, character assasination of him.
Lastly, it was YOU, yes YOU, who started telling Spectator what journalism IS! And I pointed out that you do not know journalism if journalism wrote you an article! You admitted with your very own words that you do not write based on FACTS!! You said, in your own words that you write with emotion. Much like the histrionic, emotional first post you made above.
So please, Ms. Farber, try to read your own words before you start point your finger at others because you seem to be speaking with two faces!
J. Todd DeShong

JTD

If anyone would like to know about the lack of integrity and morality of these "denialists" just go to:
www.dissidents4dumbees.blogspot.com
I have many, many posts about the denialists such as Ms. Farber and how they display time and again that they have an agenda and no gutter is too deep for them to wade into to spread their disinformation.
JTD

Charles Geshekter

I was invited to be a panelist at The Spectator's event on October 28th and accepted the invitation over six weeks ago.

I predicted to filmmaker Brent Leung and others in late September that the speakers in defense of the HIV/AIDS establishment view would likely find reasons at the very last moment not to be on the program.

I have no psychic powers, but simply know from past experience that this is typically how the defenders of the HIV/AIDS dogma comport themselves when faced with critics and skeptics.

The film "House of Numbers" is a powerful and compelling indictment of the errors, contradictions, flaws and often comical claims made by the HIV/AIDS dogmatists.

I, for one, would never want to have to stand up in public and argue against that film. I am not surprised that defenders of the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy do not either.

The Spectator merits high praise for attempting to stage a program that would have been ground-breaking and long overdue.

Alas, members of The Spectator's editorial board and staff were unprepared for the thuggish forces of censorship and the hysterical irrationality that were so savagely (but not unexpectedly) unleashed by defenders of the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy.

But the film is out and will be viewed by a global audience.

As an economic historian of Africa, I especially applaud the cogent and lucid manner by which it explains what's really making Africans ill and why "AIDS" is just a western term for a constellation of long-known, common symptoms that reflect impoverished living conditions.

The lurid, racist and hilarious insinuations that HIV/AIDS dogmatists make about African sexuality are a prime area for critical investigation.

I hope The Spectator has seen by the frenzied reaction of the HIV/AIDS dogmatists how important it is for the public to understand the contradictions so clearly highlighted in House of Numbers.

For as Celia Farber wisely observed 15 years ago, "the truth can be suspended, rerouted, rejected for seemingly astonishingly long periods of time...it's like a kind of energy. I don't think it can be destroyed. It is rather like an aeroplane in a holding pattern. It does have to land somewhere, eventually."

Here's hoping The Spectator is there at the runway when the HIV/AIDS behemoth finally touches down.

BLBS

It's clear from his blog post Joe Sonnabend was more than ready to respond to the content of the film, and anything you might have offered, Charles Geshekter. Perhaps he could have also recounted what it was like to participate with you in Mbeki's panel, and described your contributions to that discussion. It's strange that Beverly Griffin, who once supported Duesberg, is being said to be a "defender of the AIDS orthodoxy." Does anyone even know what Griffin's views are now?

As for Celia Farber and the truth, look at what she wrote about The Lancet treatment response paper and ACTG 076. I don't think Farber would recognize the truth if it pancaked into her apartment building.

JTD

Charles Geshekter is another one of the AIDS Denialists who has no moral compass and no integrity in which to hang his hat. Of course you would not want to "stand up against a film such as HON" because there is no insurmountable behemoth that can be stood up against which is built upon lies, inuendo and deception.
Mr. Geshekter is extremely familiar with such lies, inuendo and deception since he has only a History degree and zero scientific education. Mr. Geshekter is the one and same person who, shortly before Christine Maggiore died, advised her to not debate ME until I had proven what scientific papers I had published in a peer reveiewed journal. However, Mr. Geshekter has NEVER published a scientific paper on so much as the cause of a hang nail. Why? Because his field of interest is HISTORY and NOT science in any way, shape or form.
Mr. Geshekter, I challenge you to supply ANY scientific research you have published in any peer reviewed journal. I will even accept any such paper published by Farber, Scheff, Baker, Ely, Crowe, Duesberg or even the Perth Group. I am throwing down the gauntlet to you, Mr. Geshekter, to bring forth any such paper which would show that you or any of those above have the credibility to even attempt to begin this debate.
At least I have the education AND experience that you and the others so obviously lack.
JTD

Truthbot

Charles Geshekter
"The lurid, racist and hilarious insinuations that HIV/AIDS dogmatists make about African sexuality are a prime area for critical investigation."

Making assumptions and insinuations about sexual behaviour is clearly wrong, and an incorrect basis for policy. I mean, clearly we would not want to just say something like "AIDS is to do with drug use and gay lifestyles" without backing it up with research, would we?

Back to Africa. Your point is valid, which is why it is great that so much good research (critical investigation if you like) is happening in this area.

Why not just take a look at what's been done. A good place to start is Measure DHS, where you can browse population based surveys on all sorts of indicators, including sexual behaviour. Seeing as you are interested in poverty and economics, you'll find the population and fertility data interesting too.

Then, if you are interested in the economic socio-cultural side of things, dig a little deeper and have a look in pretty much any public health journal. There's no shortage.

Both the national surveys (DHS) and the more in depth studies investigate links between poverty/income and HIV and AIDS by the way. And the results are not as clear cut as you suggest. My own theory (you know, not yet backed up by facts, unlike the link between HIV and AIDS) is that the mechanisms by which poverty influences AIDS are more nuanced, possibly related on the one hand to inequalities and on the other to lack of government (and donor) investment in education and health care.

Truthbot

Short version: it is both possible and necessary to identify the links between poverty and AIDS, and to constructively critique HIV/AIDS prevention strategies; but this can be done without going down the dead-end route of questioning the overwhelming scientific evidence on HIV, AIDS and treatment.

Jacques

Welcome to the world of Aids Denialism, and pseudo-science. I hope you can sleep at night knowing that you are contributing to the deaths of those who become infected (by HIV, not moonbeams or whatever these lunatics are suggesting) and die an untimely death.

I hold the same hope for those who suggest that vaccination causes autism, or that vaccines contain "toxins" (as opposed to ingredients and the like), or that it is all a massive world government conspiracy to kill us all!

May you live in interesting times, indeed.

Truthbearer

Still using the same quotes, huh? You always say "doth protest to much" - is it because you remember that quote from high school English? Remember when you were on that internet radio crap and you couldn't even define what DNA is? Your uneducated blatherings are just what the Denialists need - advocacy from an uneducated nitwit who has no proof of anything other than his own ignorance and personal conviction for battery on the streets of LA. No go back to your conspiracy theory blog which is read by about 10 people and go back to only approving favorable comments from the same couple people regarding your verbal diarrhea about the flu vaccine being a conspiracy. What a tool.

Shawn Christopher White

My comment is directed at Michael who indicated that Tim "failed" basic math. I take no delight in showing anyone up, but it seems to me that you too have messed up the math, perhaps unknowingly.

Some points about the numbers: your just stating a test is so many percentage points accurate is not enough. You should indicate what the accuracy is for both the positive test-takers as well as the negative test-takers - and no, these figures do not have to be the same. I will assume that the accuracy is the same in both cases (for purposes of number crunching below).

Also, your assertion that .1% of population is positive MUST EQUAL .1% false positive test results is not correct (they are DIFFERENT variables being measured and do not have to be the same number, although they just MIGHT be, as your example shows, but it is not a must).

Going by your numbers that .1% of the population has the condition and that the tests are 99.9% accurate) then, according to Bayes Theorem the test accuracy for clinical trials is 99.9%, but the accuracy for diagnostic purposes is 50%!

You could have a completely different scenario - with worse results. For example, you could have had 98% accuracy for positive test-takers and 97% accuracy for negative test-takers, yes - quite, and even an ACTUAL population of 1% positive people. As you can see in this case 1% positive people does not equal .02% false positive test rates - these variables do not have to be the same (in the way that you said ".1%=.1%).

This last example results in 75% of negative test-takers being given a false positive! I like your numbers better - at least it's 50/50. You really have to be careful about the numbers. Baye's theorem is a simple mathematical concept: the probability of someone having the condition if they test positive is equal to the joint probability of someone having the condition and testing positive, divided by the overall probability of a test being positive.

Shawn White, Montreal Canada

Snout

@Shawn, the problem with Michael's analysis is even more basic than that. The 99.9% figure that he's quoting is the most common estimate of the specificity of the usual screening test alone (ELISA), not for the completed diagnostic algorithm, which in England and Wales requires the use of at least two confirmatory tests (one of which can be Western Blot).

The specificity of the completed algorithm is much higher than 99.9% - it's about as close to 100% as just about any other medical test.

To give an example, in 1990 and 1991 the Russian government conducted a huge screening program testing 49.6 million people (including a significant number of pregnant women). 50,466 or a little over 0.1% were initially reactive on ELISA, almost all of which were false reactions: on completing the testing algorithm with Western Blot confirmation there were only 178 confirmed positives (0.00035%), mostly among gay and bisexual men. This was before the HIV epidemic took off in Russia several years later, driven mainly by needle sharing among IDUs.

The positive predictive value, therefore of the screening test alone was very low, as you would expect when you are screening an extremely low prevalence population.

But the point is, even if you assume that every positive diagnosis was false, the specificity of the screening test alone was 99.9%, but that of the completed algorithm was 99.99965%. It cannot be any lower than that - you cannot have more false positives than total positives - and is almost certainly closer to 100%, given that nearly all the positive diagnoses occurred in the groups you would expect to find them, not among pregnant women, alcoholics, the malnourished, etc, as would be predicted by the HIV/AIDS "rethinkers".

Snout

@Fraser, regarding the clip you posted showing Leung interviewing Montagnier:

Montagnier was clearly talking about the factors involved when exposure to HIV results in chronic infection. Most exposures to HIV don't result in chronic infection (HIV positive status). There are a number of factors influencing the likelihood an exposure to the virus will result in a person seroconverting to HIV positive - a person's genetics, the virus subtype, the type of exposure, mucosal integrity, presence of genital ulcers, individual variations in humoral and cell mediated immunity, etc. Montagnier thinks that nutritional status is one factor, particularly in populations where malnutrition is common. He may or may not be right, but it's not exactly a radical suggestion.

The problem is that the House of Numbers publicity machine have deliberately misrepresented Montagnier's comment to make it seem that he is saying that nutritional intervention can clear the virus from HIV positive people - people who have established chronic infection. He is not saying this at all, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this might be the case.

The film is riddled with deliberate misrepresentations of what genuine scientists are saying like the above example, and most people who are not familiar with the basic science will not necessarily pick this up. Such deception is the intent of the film, which was conceived and funded by people associated with aHIV/AIDS denialist group called "Rethinking AIDS", based largely in North America.

The problem with any "debate" generated by issues supposedly raised by the film
is that you need to first deconstruct all the misrepresentations. This would be a tedious task, and not suited to a relatively brief "debate" format.

Dr. Duke

@Shawn Wite Nov 7th:
Can you explain how you calculate that a test that has been determined to be 97% accurate for negative test takers results in 75% of negative test takers getting a false-positive HIV test result?

That doesn't sound like the Baye's statistics that I learned in school.

Shawn White

@ Dr Duke.
Sorry - I meant to say '75% of the people who were given a positive test result would in fact be negative' - instead I typed something else, sorry about that. This example was based on the specificity and sensitivity I mentioned in the last part of my comments above. Here are the figures for this example (you would have to make a table - HIV Positive People and HIV Negative People as rows, HIV Pos Test Results and HIV Neg Test Results as columns:

HIV Positive test-takers who test positive: 0.98 x 0.01
= 0.0098
HIV Positive test-takers who test negative :0.02 x 0.01
= 0.0002

HIV Negative test-takers who test positive 0.03 x 0.99
= 0.0297
HIV negative test-takers who test negative:
0.97 x 0.99
= 0.9603 0.99

The HIV Positive row gives .01 probability
The HIV Negative row gives .99 probability
The HIV Positive Test Result column gives .0395 probability
The HIV Negative Test Result column gives .9605 probability

To find the probability that someone who gets a positive test result is really HIV positive: probability that someone actually has the condition (c) and gets a positive test result (+) which is written as P(c | +), and by Bayes' theorem:
the probability of someone having the condition if they test positive is equal to the joint probability of someone having the condition and testing positive, divided by the overall probability of a test being positive.

P(c | +) = 0.0098 / 0.0395 = 0.248 or around 25%. The complement of this is that 75% of of those diagnosed as positive by the test results will in fact be negative (I meant to say that in my previous comment but wrote something else by mistake).

Dr. Duke

Yes. That is correct this time. And it points out why confirmatory testing is needed even with a test that is 99% accurate.

CWBPI

Why is it that those who like House of Numbers aren't afraid of sharing their names and those who hate it generally conceal their names? Is it because they don't want investigators like me to identify them as the pharmaceutical salesmen that they are? They're so transparent...

JTD

CWPBI is quite the hypocrite. He hides his name, yet states "those who hate HON conceal their names and those who like HON do not" Was that an error, or did you, Clark Baker, mean to sign your name?
Are you afraid people who google your name, CLARK BAKER, along with LATIMES and find that you were fired from LAPD for police brutality?
How about the fact that you claim 28 years of investigative research experience, but 20 of those years were as a motorcycle cop? How did those years "investigating" speeders and jay~walkers prepare you for investigating "loser gay activists who live in their mother's basement" when in fact, I do not. My family owns a huge portion of TX and we have several ranch homes as well as several homes in cities across TX! Boy, you really are some great investigator! haha
JTD

Truthbearer

And Clarkie - I like how you use the same irrelevant Shakespeare quote over and over again. Your silly regurgitant rantings and reposts of right-wing clips, etc get no readership and no comments. Then you think that you can increase readership (maybe doubling it by getting 2 or 3 more people commenting) by trolling a post on the stupid House of Numbers movie, or some other denialist tripe that oozes from your cankerous mouth. You make yourself feel better by exaggerating and lying about you being an "investigator" and you refer to that in everything you write because you can't fathom people truly knowing you were a meter-maid and traffic cop assigned to the complaints desk and eventually fired. You lost everything and shacked up with some broad and now live as a gigolo and claim that you are "wealthy" while you exist on a meager pension.
You are one sad Douche. And the more you blather, the more people associate a douchebag like you being representative of the republican party or conservatisim. Now go back and "service" your sugarmomma!

Truthbearer

Oh - and Baker has failed to show ANY evidence of anyone being "paid" by the pharmaceutical companies. Hey, using his retarded logic - appendicitis is a conspiracy by surgical instrument companies to use their equipment! Tuberculosis is an invention of companies that make antibiotics to treat it! Pregnancy is a device used by forceps manufacturers to promote their wares! The polio vaccine was a hoax! Smallpox never existed!
BwahahaHAAHAH!! Clarkie makes everyone laugh again!!!
Oh, my sympathies to Celia Farber who recently admitted her compromised "mental" status and is seeking treatment in New Mexico. Maybe she is on the medicines that Clarkie claims are all "useless". Clarkie Douchebag, high school grad and PhD in Douchebaggery!!!

The Spectator

The Spectator apologises to Professor Moore for certain postings by contributors using pseudonyms "CWBPI" and "Michael" under our "Questioning the Aids Consensus" blog in October 2009. The comments were removed following a complaint by Professor Moore. We are happy to accept that these comments were both abusive and untrue. The Spectator has agreed to make a donation to a HIV/AIDS charity.